


swimming in the blood

by powerandpathos



Category: 19天 - Old先 | 19 Days - Old Xian
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, M/M, Music, Sex, Swearing, Tianshan - Freeform, let's all pretend i know how to write lyrics okay???, no drugs but some rock 'n roll, request
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-17
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-12 00:29:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 29,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15327744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/powerandpathos/pseuds/powerandpathos
Summary: Guan Shan’s nose wrinkles. ‘I sing like I mean it. I don’t sing it ‘cause I want everyone else to hear. That’s Jian Yi’s thing.’‘And what’s your thing?’He Tian holds his gaze. Street lamps and car headlights are mirrored in the amber surface of Guan Shan’s eyes, and He Tian can see his own shadowed silhouette in his irises, a blocky shape of darkness with no detail. For some reason, that bothers him.‘Still figurin’ that out,’ Guan Shan says.—Requested 19 Days Band AU, set around the independent band artwork by Old Xian.





	swimming in the blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [geoviki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/geoviki/gifts).



> This fic was a serious amount of fun, and it's mostly gratuitous, and a little shallow at times, but stick on your favourite rock tunes and I think you'll be okay. (Or! [Check out this Spotify playlist I've put together](https://open.spotify.com/user/bettymaestrange/playlist/4s6szmjlGwiVmA5DncAk2T?si=3SeH-CCQSfaXWHArB7zyEQ) made from my listenings and referenced tracks.)

He Tian used to resent his privacy.

It was the one thing freely given to him that he couldn’t exchange, isolation wrapped up and presented as a luxury He Tian was able to afford, and abundantly. But he was also fifteen, and alone, and ways of luring company into the walls of his apartment had a sell-by date. Nearly twenty-two, acceptance has warped into a bitter grace, because privacy no longer means isolation, but separation, and if he isn’t around people, it means he isn’t killing them.

It’s 2:36am when Jian Yi turns up at He Tian’s door. He’s unselfconsciously alone, hand wrapped around a sweating beer, TV tuned to some documentary on Russian mobs set to a low hum in the background of his apartment. He still has his leather jacket on, dark enough to hide the flecks, and he’s on his third cigarette in fifteen minutes.

He takes a long gulp of beer, closes his eyes when the buzzer sounds offensively, and swallows hard. He’s not in the mood for guests; he waits for the second ring, dares it.

It obliges.

He Tian kicks his slippered feet off the coffee table, sticking a thumb in the neck of his bottle as he trudges over to the door, and swings it open with a belligerent tug.

‘We had a _deal_ , Cheng,’ he starts, waspish, and stops. Cigarette and bottle hang limp at his side. ‘What the fuck are _you_ doing here?’

Jian Yi chuckles and scratches ineffectually at the back of his neck. He shrugs. ‘Can we talk?’

He Tian takes him in: the keyed-up look in his eyes, the way his fingers drum on his jeans. He Tian would say he was high if he doesn’t know Jian Yi isn’t the kind of guy to be into that, and because this animation isn’t unusual—he’s a jumpy kid who doesn’t know how to control his own limbs half the time, let alone his mouth.

‘Sure,’ He Tian says warily, letting him in. ‘Everything okay?’

Jian Yi strides in, flops down on He Tian’s sofa. He sets about inspecting the gathered bottles on the table, takes a few cautious sips, pouts.

‘You started without me?’ he asks He Tian, standing before him.

He Tian snatches the bottle from Jian Yi’s hand. ‘You weren’t invited,’ He Tian reminds him, dropping his cigarette in the dregs of the bottle and enjoying the extinguishing fizz. ‘I’m starting—’ He raises his own bottle to his mouth, downs the rest of the bitter liquid. ‘—and finishing by myself.’

‘Stingy.’

He Tian snorts. ‘Please. The minibar is yours if you tell me what the fuck you’re doing here in the middle of the night.’

Jian Yi leans forward. He bridges his fingers together over his knees, building a faux suspense that He Tian lets him indulge in. ‘I came to you with a proposition.’

He Tian raises his eyebrows, folds his arms over his chest. He says, ‘Zhengxi’s not giving you what you need?’

‘What? No, he—What? Fuck off.’ Jian Yi purses his lips and rolls his shoulders back. He Tian props another smoke between his lips and tugs the zippo from his pocket, and Jian Yi says, ‘I want us to start a _band_.’

In the silence of the apartment, He Tian stares at him.

He’s not sure where to laugh or tell Jian Yi to get the fuck out. The day was rough, his brother more of a fuck than usual, pushing He Tian to the boundaries of his contract and the boundaries of other things too, and He Tian answered the headache blooming in his temples by pushing it out with beer and a second pack of cigarettes. Hazy liquor vision and smoking like a freight train for the night—everyone had their vices. Everyone had their coping mechanisms.

‘Is this a joke?’ He Tian says, remembering the cigarette between his lips, the zippo raised to light. He swipes on the lighter wheel. He says, incredulousness setting his voice deadpan, ‘A band.’

‘Remember the summer before high school, at the cabin, and we were all talking shit about what we’d be. What we’d do.’

‘We were middle school kids drinking _baiju_ for the first time. You were, at least.’

Jian Yi wrinkles his nose up in offense. ‘But I’m serious. What if we actually did it.’

He Tian takes a drag, exhales. Part of him wants to swallow the smoke and choke on it. ‘Does Zhengxi know about this?’

‘He’s on his way over.’

‘Of course he is,’ He Tian mutters. He rubs the heel of his palm into his eyes. He doesn’t want to be around for this childish bullshit right now. Not when he has to be on the road in four hours, courtesy of his brother. He can’t be like Jian Yi, driven by whim and fancy. He won’t get that luxury.

‘I think this would be good for us,’ says Jian Yi. ‘It’s an outlet. It’s—it’s the four of us, back together again. Like when we were kids. Y’know, before—all that other shit happened.’

 _That other shit_ being Jian Yi’s disappearance, a strange vacuum of time where no one knew quite what to do for a while. It had been sudden, Jian Yi ripped from the fabric of a time and a place they were all familiar with—and then gone.

High school and college and work trickled by, tar-like through their fingers.

And then back.

It was like that reality had been an unreality, some product of mass hysteria and false memory. Because unlike the rest of them, Jian Yi hadn’t changed. His features were sharper, his hair longer, his body leaner and taller. But it hadn’t been a package deal of trauma. He was the same stupid kid from middle school, chaotic and impulsive and hyperactive and a little wild. They’d grown—physically, mentally, emotionally. And Jian Yi seemed to have left that part of him behind, a middle schooler stuck in a young adult’s body, incongruous with the rest of them.

‘Look,’ He Tian starts. ‘Jian Yi.’ And then he stops. ‘The four of us?’ he says.

Jian Yi smiles, and the buzzer goes again.

He Tian throws Jian Yi a dark look before heading to the door. It’s Zhengxi, looking as tired as He Tian feels, and he pushes past He Tian and stalks towards Jian Yi.

‘If you pull that shit again, I swear to god, Jian Yi, _I’ll kill you._ ’

He Tian shuts the door. ‘Come on in,’ he mutters under his breath, sweeping out an arm towards his living room, where Zhengxi has Jian Yi in an uncompromising headlock, one foot on the edge of the sofa, the other resting dangerously near Jian Yi’s crotch. Jian Yi’s own expression is impish and edging towards pained, face purpling, but laughter bubbles from his mouth instead, and he puts up little defence to Zhengxi’s attack.

‘How else was I gonna get you here?’ Jian Yi chokes out.

At the strain in his voice, Zhengxi releases him and steps back. ‘That was _bullshit_ ,’ he spits, face ashen. ‘If you wanted to talk to me you could have fucking called me and not sent me a stupid SOS text.’

‘I’m sorry, Xixi,’ Jian Yi mumbles. He tucks a strand of hair behind his ear. ‘I didn’t mean to worry you.’

‘Well, you _fucking did.’_

Jian Yi pauses. His eyes flick upwards, bright. ‘Really?’

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ He Tian says, cutting through their little moment. ‘I’ve got shit to do, so.’ He flourishes his hand. ‘Zhengxi, Jian Yi’s come up with the grand idea of starting a band. That’s why he’s here. That’s why you’re both here. In my apartment. At 3am.’ He smiles, feels it coppery and dagger-like in his mouth, teeth close to cutting the inside of his cheeks. Zhengxi and Jian Yi exchange glances.

‘A band?’ Zhengxi says. ‘For real?’

‘Getting a label, touring, music gigs. _Making music_.’

Zhengxi lowers himself onto the seat next to Jian Yi. He takes the news more tolerantly than He Tian. ‘We haven’t talked about this since we were kids.’

Jian Yi scratches at his bare forearm, red lines on his skin fading to white. ‘And it’s a big thing to ask of you all, I know. You played drums all through middle school; I _know_ you play guitar, He Tian. I’ve got vocals. But I’ve been thinking about it for a week now. I really think we can.’

 _A week,_ He Tian thinks. _Huh._ That explained the sudden arrival, pumped up energy hoarded inside of himself like a jack-in-the-box, a spring that propelled him to He Tian’s doorstep.

‘The four of us?’ He Tian repeats, still stuck on it, a small grip around his vocal chords to keep them steady.

Jian Yi smiles at him, and He Tian wonders if he was wrong. It’s a smile He Tian might wear, if the occasion called for it, winsome and quietly victorious. The arrogance of knowing something unknown, of having the stronger deck in his hands. At it’s dark core, it’s a threat, and it has its purpose, and He Tian hadn’t known Jian Yi could wear it.

Jian Yi drops his voice. ‘Guan Shan’s already said yes.’

He Tian fights hard to keep his expression still. ‘How’d you manage that?’ he asks steadily, stubbing out his cigarette butt into the over-filled ashtray on the coffee table. He wants a beer—another cigarette.

‘Told him you wouldn’t be joining.’

‘Jian Yi—’ Zhengxi starts.

‘You’re a shit,’ says He Tian.

Jian Yi starts laughing. ‘God, calm down. I’m kidding.’ He chuckles to himself, shrugs pseudo-apologetically at He Tian. ‘How else? I told him you’d pay him.’

There’s an audible pause, then the smack of hands on forehead as Zhengxi cradles his head in the lock of his palms, exhaling slowly.

He Tian lifts his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Of course you did.’

‘Like it’s not a tactic you haven’t used a hundred times before,’ Jian Yi counters.

He Tian sighs. ‘I’ve been… trying for authenticity lately when it comes to him.’

Jian Yi leans back, smug. He jerks his chin at He Tian. ‘And yet Guan Shan still got caught on the hook. How’s that authenticity working out for you?’

‘I think I said I was trying.’

Zhengxi kicks his feet out in front of him. ‘This is the worst fucking idea I’ve ever heard.’

‘Correction,’ says Jian Yi, holding up a finger. ‘I’ve had many bad ideas, you’ve just never heard them.’ With cautious playfulness, ‘Remember the bridge?’

‘The bridge?’ He Tian prompts, when Zhengxi only scowls.

‘Jackass jumped off a bridge when my phone fell into the river,’ Zhengxi explains, glowering. ‘Didn’t even see the ladder to the banks.’

‘Sounds accurate,’ He Tian says.

Jian Yi doesn’t have the decency or dignity to look sorry for it; He Tian gets why Zhengxi, taciturn and stoic, would have a thing for someone like his childhood best friend. Must be nice to have someone so polar opposite to grow up with—to look out for you, to have each other’s heads and hearts in the right places.

 _‘Come on_ , guys. We could be like The Smiths, or the Stones. Singing in front of global crowds and drenched in festival sun sweat and crashing in the back of a van after a concert.’

He Tian wanders over to the wall opposite the couch, and props a shoulder against the plaster of his two-hundred-thousand-a-month apartment for one. ‘Sounds great,’ he allows.

He thinks, _Sounds better than anything I’m doing with Cheng right now._

Jian Yi clambers ganglingly to his feet. ‘I want that feeling I get when I listen to Mick Jagger or Steven Tyler or—or Derek and the Dominoes and AC/DC and—’

‘Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll,’ He Tian drawls. He thumbs away the smile turning the corner of his mouth upwards. ‘Guess I’ve got the first one down. How are you doing on that front, Jian Yi?’

Typically, Jian Yi’s pale complexion blooms like a rose. Typically, jaw muscle twitching, Zhengxi’s does too.

_Fucking children._

‘That’s besides the point,’ Jian Yi pushes out, rubbing his palms on the front of his jeans. ‘I want that empowerment. I want that voice. That expression.’

‘That music’s about anger,’ Zhengxi reminds him, and they hear the hoarse lyrics of the late 60’s and 70’s screaming out at them, the challenge of the guitar riffs and drum solos an answering, furious echo.

‘Sometimes it’s about love,’ Jian Yi points.

Zhengxi rolls his eyes. ‘Yeah, about how much it fucking sucks.’

‘Not true. Led Zeppelin’s _Whole Lotta Love_?’

He Tian raises a brow. ‘ _Way down inside honey, you need it_?’

 _‘Love in an Elevator?’_ Jian Yi challenges.

Zhengxi says, _‘I'll show you how to fax in the mailroom, honey.’_

He Tian trades a glance with Zhengxi. ‘Sure sounds romantic to me.’

He ignores Zhengxi’s choked laughter— _Do you even listen to the lyrics, dude?_ —and Jian Yi’s indignant protestations as he gathers his blond hair into a ponytail, and He Tian ambles over to the beer fridge, stocks depleting rapidly this evening as he tugs out three bottles.

He pops the caps off into the recycling chute, because Guan Shan swore at him the last time he’d thrown them straight into the trash, and the thought arrests his motion. After a moment, he sets the bottles on the side counter, and slides his phone from his back pocket.

 _You and me huddled around a mic, huh?_ he types out.

It’s goes to ‘Read’ almost immediately, and He Tian’s heart rate spikes.

_tf are u talking abt?_

He Tian kicks his heels back against the fridge, body restless and wired with the buzz of alcohol and cigarettes and Guan Shan tethered to him at the other end of the phone.

_Jian Yi’s grand plan to make us the next Queen. Aka your new job courtesy of yours truly._

He imagines Guan Shan’s face, screwed up and irritable like a hornet smoked from its hive and liable to sting. He Tian knows there’s a certain adrenaline rush that comes with the pain.

 _what abt it?_ Guan Shan responds.

_Just wondering where you fit into it. Been holding out on me with your musical prowess?_

_wldn’t u like to know._

_You already know the answer to that, sweetheart._

He Tian snorts at his own endearment; there’s a wicked pleasure in imagining the exact anger it will rile up in Guan Shan. He doesn’t know anyone else who reacts so strongly—who makes him feel so present and active. Who makes him feel like he has a sway. Who fights back even if they know they can’t. He Tian acknowledges his own sadism with unwavering honesty.

There’s a distant warbling inside his own head, the aftermath of a song playing faintly in his head on repeat. _Wild horses couldn’t drag me away…_

Disappointed at the lack of a response, He Tian asks Guan Shan why he isn’t sleeping.

_could ask u the same._

He Tian chews the inside of his cheek. _Jian Yi banging on my door at 2am a good enough reason?_ He sends another text: _And work._

Awkwardness drapes a heavy layer between them, even without the real interaction. _Work._ That dubious, uncertain thing He Tian will refer to now and again without the permanence and legitimacy of specifics. Guan Shan doesn’t pry—never has done—and He Tian’s sure there’s an element of fear lingering on the topic. Don’t ask, don’t tell.

 _same_ , Guan Shan replies. _just finished my shift._

 _Go to sleep,_ He Tian tells him. _Dream of me._

_u wish._

He really, really did.

 

* * *

 

They go to Qui Feng’s place a week later, crammed into Zhengxi’s second-hand Geely Panda, Guan Shan claiming shotgun and He Tian taking the opportunity to steal glances at the profile of Guan Shan’s face from the backseat. Jian Yi’s knees are pressed up tight against Zhengxi’s seat, and he shakes his leg enough that Zhengxi has to reach back and smack him into stillness.

Her office is small, nestled in a complex of newly renovated business spaces, tower-high and made of glass, all chrome embellishments and reflecting marble floors. Jian Yi presses his nose and hands against the glass elevator as it lifts them up through the building, breath steaming up the glass, and He Tian catches the reflection of Guan Shan standing behind him, arms folded, propped up against the back wall, eyes lowered to his feet.

They haven’t spoken since last week, since their quick-fire conversation of snarky retorts, and that’s generally how it goes, He Tian shooting out something quippy and crude to garner a response that breaks the weeks-long radio silence, Guan Shan gracing him with an irritated two-word response.

He never texts first.

Qui Feng is alone when he knocks on her office door, a cube of frosted glass on the inside, glossy signed posters framed on the walls. A TV screen airs the CGTN news channel, silent and subtitled behind her desk, which is strewn with papers and CD-cases. At odds with the glass building, the desk, the floor-to-ceiling windows that expose her and everyone else in the complex, an old vinyl player sits in one corner, and a tower stereo in another.

Qui Feng pauses the concerto piece when she sees He Tian in her doorway, and pushes herself up from her desk chair.

‘Well, _hello,_ stranger,’ she says, bewildered. Her arms are outstretched, and He Tian welcomes the fleeting embrace, the slight squeeze. ‘To what do I owe the honour?’

He’d been in his first year of high school the last time he saw her, and the green streak through her fringe has been replaced with a full head of pink candy floss dye, curled and bouncing around her round cheeks in ringlets, beaded earrings clacking against her throat when she moves.

‘I’ve come to ask a favour,’ He Tian says. He steps aside to give her a glimpse at the other three. ‘Jian Yi, Zhan Zhengxi, and Mo Guan Shan,’ he introduces. Jian Yi waves, Zhengxi nods, and Guan Shan is staring at her. Staring, He Tian realises, at the hand she has rested on He Tian’s arm.

Qui Feng pulls an indignant face. ‘ _A favour_ doesn’t sound very promising,’ she retorts, casting her gaze over the four of them. He knows the insult lingers there slightly, that his presence only makes itself known when he needs something. But it’s insignificant to him; she knows how the He’s work by now. ‘Take a seat.’

They do, He Tian and Jian Yi settling into the chairs in front of the desk, Guan Shan and Zhengxi situating themselves on the small sofa beside the door.

Qui Feng clicks open a new document on her computer. ‘Okay,’ she says, glancing at He Tian. Straight to business: ‘Talk to me.’

He Tian does, as elected. This was a business proposal, not the ramblings of a dream, and even Jian Yi had agreed he would stay quiet during the meeting. He tells her about their experiences, their inspiration, what’s driving all of this. Dutifully, she listens. Professionally, she takes notes on everything He Tian says.

But the time comes, as he expected. She reacts in the same way he had, for good reason. Jian Yi was blinded by passion, Zhengxi sacrificing rationality for his affections, Guan Shan casting out hope for what he would never take freely. He Tian doesn’t need this in the same way they do.

‘Rock,’ she says, picking up a pen and letting it tap with fluid energy against her desk. ‘You can’t create something that’s dead.’

‘Dead?’ Jian Yi says, shifting in her seat. ‘The Foo Fighters? Anything with Jack White? The Killers? The Arctic Monkeys? You can’t tell me a genre’s dead when—’

‘I can, and I just did,’ Qui Feng cut in sharply. ‘What He Tian’s talking about is Classic Rock. That’s what you like, isn’t it? Unless you’re a group like The Darkness or Wolf Mother, then you’re looking at a career of shitty renditions in a karaoke bar or illegal covers on YouTube.’

‘That’s just insulting.’

Qui Feng leans forward, smiles cuttingly in the way He Tian used to remember. She’d smiled like that the last time he’d seen her, too. And he supposes that’s why things ended the way they did—she wouldn’t take anyone’s bullshit lying down.

‘You want to be in this industry?’ she asks Jian Yi. ‘Get used to being fucked over and shit on and spat on,’ she says, stabbing her capped pen into the desk. ‘Because being _insulted_ is the least of your worries. A healthy dose of Cui Jian will teach you that if you don’t know it already.’

Jian Yi glances at He Tian, and He Tian lifts a shoulder at him in a half-shrug. She’s right. He Tian can’t hide that from him.

 _You chose this,_ he’s saying.

‘We can mix sounds,’ Zhengxi says from behind them. ‘We don’t want to be something that doesn’t fit in this time anymore. We can be inspired by one thing and still be another.’ He lifts his eyebrows. ‘Are Muse or The Black Keys a dead group to you?’

‘Hold on,’ she says, using her desk to twist in her chair towards He Tian. ‘Your sound is what, exactly? Most people approach me with a demo, He Tian. I can’t do anything for you boys unless you can offer me a sample of your sound.’

He Tian clears his throat. ‘That’s the thing, Qui Feng.’ He shifts in his chair, plucks a piece of lint from his grey sweater. ‘We don’t have one.’ Jian Yi clears his throat pointedly, and He Tian concedes, ‘Yet.’

She says, ‘That’s a problem.’

Past her window, a freight train rumbles past on the tracks. It’s muted from the thick glass walls, a distant murmur of sound. The cup of water on Qui Feng’s desk trembles slightly.

He Tian leans back in his seat. ‘I’m sure you can pull some strings. Get us a gig somewhere. Something small.’

Qui Feng is smiling at him, incredulous. ‘He Tian,’ she says. ‘Do you know how this works? The venue pays _me_ to have you there. And that figure is determined on your ratings, your talent, the probability of sales, and a hundred other factors.’ One by one, she ticks them off her fingers. ‘Do you really think any venue is going to take on an unknown, soundless band who hasn’t pushed out a _single_ record? Let alone anything on social media?’ She blows a strand of hair out of her face and says, ‘I mean, do you think I’m crazy?’

He Tian says, ‘Yes.’

Qui Feng glares at him.

He Tian puts his elbows on the desk, hands spread out in front of him. ‘Look, you know I won’t back out of a deal once I’ve made it. And if we’re shit then we’ll reimburse you two-fold. Three-fold.’

‘We won’t be shit,’ Jian Yi mutters.

Qui Feng ignores him. ‘This is a risk I can’t afford. This isn’t even a risk—it’s sheer idiocy.’ She glances at the closed door, and then leans forward. ‘My _job_ is on the line, Tian. I haven’t signed a decent band in months. My boss barely trusts my judgment anymore. And _no_ ,’ she says, pointing a finger at He Tian, ‘you _can’t_ bribe him. The He name means nothing in his circles. He won’t give a shit about your money.’

‘Sign us, and your luck will change.’

The deliberation is clear in her eyes. He can’t promise her anything, and she knows it. She knows this is a risk as much as he does, regardless of the semantics she wants to use that make this seem worse or better than it is. She risked things before for his family and lost it all, and there’s no reason for her to trust in this now—to trust him.

Maybe it’s Jian Yi’s puppy-dog expression, clear-eyed and wishful; maybe it’s the cool look He Tian gives that has exactly zero expectation that she wants to prove wrong. Maybe it’s the rent for her apartment she’s overdue on, the phone bill she needs to pay, the medical expense letter shoved in the bottom drawer of her bedroom side table. Maybe she’s feeling risky.

But she says, ‘Fine,’ and points a finger at him. ‘But you’d better be fucking right. And I’ll take my compensation four-fold, thank you very much.’

 

* * *

 

Qui Feng pulls him aside while they file out of her office, a tentative hand placed on his arm, a question in her eyes. The three boys shuffle towards the elevator— _Meet you in the lobby?_ —and it’s an effort to ignore the spark that has been lit in Guan Shan’s averted gaze when he brushes past. He Tian takes a breath as he shuts the door; he’ll deal with that flame after, take his chances that it hasn’t spread like wildfire by the time he gets downstairs.

In the meantime, Qui Feng sits propped on her desk, feet crossed at her ankles, barely touching the floor. She’s expectant, but the businesswoman has vanished for a moment.

‘So,’ she says, eyebrows raised. _‘This_ , He Tian? Does your father know?’

‘He doesn’t, and he won’t.’

She shrugged. ‘Thought as much.’

He Tian’s fingers itch habitually for a cigarette. He wants something to touch, something to put between his lips that will fill his lungs until they burn. He knows there’s a name for this, for needing something that hurts him—for needing something at all. He doesn’t push at the confining walls of his mind for it. He’ll let it sit there.

‘Could you imagine his face?’ he asks, plucking the lighter from the pocket of his jeans and twirling it between his fingers.

‘Unfortunately.’

He Tian huffs a breath of soured laughter. He tries to picture it—incredulity of it, the first whisper of a storm, humidity wet on his skin as his father’s cheeks mottle with anger like thunder clouds. And then the beating, the whiplash of a lightning bolt severing him through his centre that had been worth it before. Every time before. Maybe not now. Not yet.

This wasn’t his dream to fight for. Maybe stronger: this wasn’t Guan Shan’s.

Qui Feng tucks a strand of hair behind her hair. ‘Do it cleanly, then,’ she says, the same way He Tian’s been asked before to pull out a tooth and strip off a bandaid and break a neck. ‘Tell me how your brother’s doing.’

He Tian looks at her. He knew this would come. ‘The same,’ he tells her.

‘The same,’ she echoes. In it, there’s something like relief. Something like disappointment.

 _He’s not worth going back to_. _You won’t find a different person in his place. He didn’t deserve you, and he still doesn’t._

‘Does Cheng know about this?’ she asks, sharper.

He Tian says, ‘I’m working for him now. He can’t.’

‘You know he will eventually. He always does.’

He Tian shrugs. ‘He has his ways; I have mine. By the time he finds out, it won’t matter anymore.’

The way Qui Feng looks at him changes, quietness shaping the air around them both, and He Tian’s gut wrenches.

She looks sad.

‘Do those boys know what you do, Tian?’ she asks, jerking her chin towards the door.

‘Barely. They don’t need to.’

‘Until you end up in a body bag,’ Qui Feng says quietly.

‘I won’t. I’m too good at my job.’

Qui Feng chuckles hollowly. ‘That’s what he used to say. Wish I could say the same, honestly, but here we are.’ She pushes away from the desk, wanders back around to her chair, and says, ‘At least my failures won’t kill me.’

 

* * *

 

He Tian finds him outside when he’s done. Jian Yi and Zhengxi are waiting in the complex lobby, helping themselves to free vending-machine coffee, flipping through magazines that Zhengxi reads over Jian Yi’s shoulder, and making use of the indoor heating.

There’s a chill in the air, the city recovering from a long, hostile winter with time left to go. Flower beds shiver in the icy breeze, skies mute and grey above them, rolling tyres and distant car horns the only solace for the colourless silence, coupled with the rhythmic thumping of Guan Shan kicking his boot into the complex’s low perimeter wall.

His foot is throbbing by the time He Tian exits the sliding doors. He’ll need a bottle of peroxide and a roll of gauze bandaging from his mother’s medical cupboard when he gets home. He Tian called him a sadist once, but the pain wasn’t a pleasure, just a replacement for something that burned hotter.

 _You should see someone,_ He Tian’d said. _Get help to deal with it._

_You told me you’d sew my mouth shut with wire. Let’s go for couple’s therapy._

He Tian hadn’t mentioned it again.

‘You’re angry,’ He Tian says, stopping a decent distance away. He Tian doesn’t need to guess this; Guan Shan spends enough time wearing fury like a coat that the statement is true at least most of the time.

He turns on He Tian, ignores the fractured throb in his foot. ‘Do you care about making this work at all? Or did you do this just so you’d be able to fuck the manager?’

‘She’s not my type,’ He Tian sighs.

Guan Shan stabs a finger up towards the higher storeys of the building. ‘Does _she_ know that?’

‘You’re misinterpreting, Guan Shan.’

‘Am I? Then why did Zhengxi ask when the two of you started dating in the elevator back down? It seemed pretty fucking obvious to all of us.’

‘She’s ten years older than me.’

‘I didn’t realise you had _preferences_.’

All expression slips from He Tian’s face. The jab is like pushing splinters under his nails, but Guan Shan knows he understands: how could he flirt with Guan Shan so incessantly, pretend to care for him so much—unrequited or not—and be fucking other people while he kept up the pretence?

‘Do you want to listen to me or do you want to talk about how much of a slut I am?’

Guan Shan falters, just for a second, but the glower slides easily back in place. ‘Be my guest.’

He Tian makes a show of checking his watch—something that probably costs a year’s worth of Guan Shan’s rent—and says, ‘Qui Feng was engaged to my brother.’

Guan Shan ignores whatever has started glowing in the back of his chest. ‘Was?’

‘They broke it off when I was in highschool. You’ve seen what she’s like, and my brother wasn’t that. Because of work—because of the things he had to do and the shit he was involved with, he couldn’t show her he cared. I don’t even know if he did. And my family made things difficult for her.’

‘They didn’t approve?’ Guan Shan asks sourly.

He Tian shook his head. ‘Her parents own a few acres of rice paddies in Guangxi. That wasn’t enough for my family.’

‘Of course it wasn’t,’ Guan Shan mutters. He imagines being brought up before the He’s at a family dinner, the slow sneer they’d wear as a collective when they looked him up and down. The way he talks, the way he dresses, the studs in his ears and the rings on his fingers, scarred and hatchcrossed and ghosted with flaking blood, and the look that can’t help but break itself out of him like scorched earth.

He asks, ‘If they mess with your girlfriends, how do they handle your friendships?’

He Tian’s lips quirk. ‘Is _that_ what this is?’ he asks. ‘A friendship?’

Guan Shan narrows his eyes. ‘The fuck are you talking about?’

He Tian folds his arms over his chest, arches his back slightly. Guan Shan’s eyes wander the lines of his neck while He Tian’s wander the street behind him, office workers in suits ambling between glittering skyscrapers, heels clicking on pavements; the slow, restless watch of a hunter.

He Tian says, conversational, ‘I didn’t think you were _capable_ of jealousy, honestly.’

Guan Shan stills. Cargo trains rattle past, and there’s a trembling in the back of his head and _fuck him, the arrogant piece of shit._

‘Jealousy?’ he grits out. ‘You think this—you think I’m _jealous,_ you motherfucker?’

He Tian slides his gaze to Guan Shan’s. ‘You really think you can feed me some bullshit about being worried that I’m _compromised?_ Like you care about any of this? Please.’

‘I care,’ Guan Shan grinds out, and then, because he can: ‘I’m getting paid for this, aren’t I?’

He Tian has a response already prepared when a high-pitched trill sounds from his pocket, aborting any further conversation. Guan Shan’s almost disappointed—he was just getting started, the fire sparked and starting to catch, He Tian always so fucking flammable to him, and he thinks this must be what people mean when they talk about being ridden hard and put away wet.

Guan Shan watches the change take place: the furrowing brow, the straightening back, the stiffness with which He Tian tugs out his phone, swipes through a passcode and a series of screens, and then the darkness that slides across his eyes like cloud cover rolling over a full moon.

‘Work,’ Guan Shan guesses dully.

He Tian nods stiffly. ‘He’s asking where I am.’

Noticeably, He Tian hasn’t sent a response.

‘Gonna get that?’ Guan Shan asks.

A muscle jumps in He Tian’s jaw, and his eyes flick between Guan Shan and his phone in staccato bursts.

‘No,’ He Tian says eventually. The phone disappears back into his pocket. ‘I’ve got bigger problems right now.’

Guan Shan cocks an eyebrow. ‘Talkin’ about me?’

‘That’s cute, but no,’ He Tian says, burning up a cigarette in what Guan Shan thinks must be a delayed action for him; Guan Shan was only half the reason he would’ve come outside. ‘Qui Feng doesn’t have any studio space left. She’s all booked up with her other clients. We’ll have to find somewhere else to rent. I promised her a demo at least a week before she gets us a show.’

‘Thought you didn’t back out of deals.’

He Tian exhales smoke. ‘What’s your point?’

‘You’re promising her a lot on shit evidence. We’ve never played together. I sold my guitar back in high school, and I’m bettin’ Zhengxi doesn’t own a drum kit anymore.’

‘I can buy us what we need.’

A small pit buries itself open in Guan Shan’s stomach. He Tian’s throwaway comment bursts a spotlight onto their differences, glaring and too-bright—how easy money must make a life.

Sometimes Guan Shan forgets about it, just for a few minutes. Hours. Maybe a day. But the illusion is a rubber band stretching until it welts Guan Shan’s skin on the snap-back, stinging and orienting. The pain is grounding, an extension of the anger more than a distraction.

‘What’s the point?’ he asks. ‘If this goes to shit, what’s the point?’

‘While that’s a defeatist attitude and fucking _painfully_ you, I believe in investments. In risks.’

Guan Shan shivers in the frigid air, resists the unfortunate urge to shuffle closer to He Tian who he _knows_ runs like a fucking furnace, not cold and stone-like as he’d hoped for. His gloved hands curl in his pockets, thumb nail biting into his palms with each distracted stroke of movement.

He lets the cold ache in his bones speak for him. ‘Am I an investment to you?’

He Tian’s eyebrows disappear into his hairline, a slight downward curve shaping his mouth. Slowly: ‘Like I said. Defeatist.’

Guan Shan tells himself he doesn’t know what He Tian’s implying, but the thing is—he usually does. It’s easier to pretend the opposite; sometimes it’s enough to make him believe it.

‘I think I know somewhere,’ he says. ‘Where we can play.’

He Tian’s attention takes on a different calibre. ‘You do? Where?’

‘It’s not a studio,’ he says. And then, quietly muttered, ‘It’s—yeah, fuckin’ _really_ not a studio. But it might work.’

He Tian glances over his own shoulder. Inside, Zhengxi and Jian Yi are playing games on their phones, heads bowed. Every so often, they steal glances at each other as if the other won’t notice, quick thief takings, and pretend not to steal glances. It’s a game of heartstring cat-and-mouse. It’s fucking sickening.

Absently, watching them, He Tian says, _‘Might_ is good enough for now.’

 

* * *

 

 _Not a studio_ was accurate.

They realise this as soon as Zhengxi takes the left turn onto the industrial park near the coast and pulls up in front of a shuttered garage, an amp sitting on He Tian’s thighs, a folded-up mic resting between Jian Yi’s knees. The paint has rusted and there’s graffiti marking the walls; the property hasn’t been tended to in years, and this close to water, the frosted air and lack of birdcall renders it barren and bitter.

‘This is the place?’ Zhengxi asks, frowning up through the windscreen at the lot. His fingers hesitate around the key, still in the ignition, exhaust pipe sputtering out smoke behind them.

They all seem to be waiting for something.

‘This is it,’ says Guan Shan, but he doesn’t get out, and his fingers are stuck around the door handle. There’s a strip of paint still exposed in the corner of the lot’s shutter, patchy black that doesn’t show up well against the grey, easily missed, easily mistaken for what it reads so clearly to Guan Shan.

_Property of the Mo’s._

‘Sure about this?’ He Tian mutters, leaning close enough to him in the back seat that Guan Shan feels the warmth of his breath. Of course the fucker would be the first to notice something was up, and that’s a truth that Guan Shan won’t acknowledge right now, or later. He’s not here to hand out free passes to people who think they _know_ him.

Guan Shan only looks at him as he pulls the handle and steps out the car, shutting it firmly behind him. It takes a few seconds before Zhengxi cuts the engine and the others follow Guan Shan up to the lot, He Tian’s eyes a hot press on the back of his neck.

‘Are you okay?’ Guan Shan hears Zhengxi murmur to Jian Yi, who’s looking paler than usual when Guan Shan glances over his shoulder.

‘I’ll be fine,’ says Jian Yi, and, uncharacteristic, rolls off the tender hand on his shoulder.

Guan Shan’s curiosity doesn’t extend far enough to ask—neither does his care.

He palms the key in his pocket, unlocks the shutter, and heaves it upwards, metal groaning and screeching with lack of use and winter chill, metal burning cold in Guan Shan’s hands, his arms straining slightly with the pull.

His dad used to make it look so easy.

It’s colder inside than out, a threadbare Persian rug collecting dust and woodlice on the concrete floor and a lime green sofa fading respectfully against the right wall. An old electric heater sits unused in the corner beside a mostly-empty bookshelf, Kodak photos and black-and-white band posters tacked to the concrete walls and curling up at the edges, a tapestry of the Chinese flag pinned to the back wall from his father’s faux-activism days, back when the state looked after its people, back when it was supposed to look after him and be just.

‘He looks like you.’

Guan Shan slides his gaze to He Tian, an otherwise silent figure beside him, eyes roaming the fading family portraits and quick snapshots of a time Guan Shan barely remembers anymore. They’ve moved apartments since then; he doesn’t recognise the home that sits behind them, has a vague recollection of the paisley wallpaper. His certainty lies with one thing: he doesn’t remember seeing his mother ever smile like that, Guan Shan five years old and perched on his father’s knee, giggling.

They look different; they look happy.

They look like a family, not the wreckage of a thing they’ve become now, the washed-up fragments of a ship that make up visitation times and three jobs and an apartment they barely afford each month.

‘I look like him,’ Guan Shan corrects. ‘Except the hair.’

‘And the eyes,’ He Tian says, meeting his gaze. ‘They’re your mother’s.’

Guan Shan holds his stare in a mutual exchange.

Shuffling behind them draws his attention away. Jian Yi is leafing through a stack of old magazines, dust motes swirling pale and static-y in the dim light, and Zhengxi picks up the guitar leaning against the back wall. The strings have frayed from disuse and the wood is faded and in desperate need of varnishing. Zhengxi runs his fingertips over the guitar’s body.

_‘Don’t touch that.’_

Guan Shan yanks it from Zhengxi’s hands with a viciousness that almost scares him, and Zhengxi flinches back. Both stunned, they succumb to an awkward silence as Guan Shan holds the guitar aloft, as his shoulders curved.

‘It was my dad’s,’ he says helplessly. It’s the only apology he can offer.

‘It’s cool,’ Zhengxi says tentatively. ‘Sorry, man. I should’ve known better.’

Guan Shan swallows. ‘Me and my dad—we’d come here some weekends to give my mom some downtime. We’d play sometimes.’ He scratches the back of his neck in vague, conscious embarrassment that his pride has given way to. ‘It’s kind of a shithole but—’

‘It’s perfect.’

‘—it was perfect.’

Guan Shan doesn’t look at He Tian. He can’t. His heart feels like a star about to collapse in his chest. He holds the neck of the guitar in his hand until the strings pinch his skin. Any tighter, and he’s scared he’ll fracture the wood.

Jian Yi shrugs, nods. ‘He Tian’s right. We never needed anything more than space and a place to go. It’s kind of cold in here but we can work with it. Make it ours.’ He beams. ‘And isn’t this how people used to do it? Screaming music from their parents’ garage until they had something like a band?’

‘Or something really _not_ ,’ Zhengxi remarks.

Jian Yi makes a _psht_ sound. ‘Let’s go get the kit.’

They saunter out to the car and grab bagged guitars and the drum kit from the trunk, spending the next hour hooking up wires and unwinding extension cables and screwing together the drum set. Jian Yi beats the dust off the carpet outside and, more miraculously, gets the heater working again.

‘Need a hand?’ He Tian asks later, as Guan Shan makes an effort to pull the shuter back down.

‘If you want,’ says Guan Shan.

It’s easy work with the both of them, but the shutter still comes down with a screech that makes them both wince, leaving them in the low amber glow of a floor lamp.

He Tian props himself against the shutter, one-shouldered, and folds his arms. The way he looks at Guan Shan is lazy.

‘Tell me about this place,’ he says.

‘Already did,’ Guan Shan replies. ‘What more is there?’

‘Everything.’

Guan Shan bites down on his cheek. He owes He Tian nothing, but the pull is there—the unfinished reminiscence, the memory of a place he’s never shared. Never even wanted to. Something must have changed for him to want to now; maybe it’s the being here, so many years later. That’s all.

‘He kept an allotment a few miles out,’ Guan Shan tells him, mirroring his movement. Their shoulders almost touch. ‘Grew stuff for the restaurant, sometimes for home. He used to keep all the tools here, and brought me with him when I was old enough.’

‘Mo Guan Shan likes to garden,’ He Tian says dryly. It’s not meant as a jibe, even if it prickles. The words are coming freer on Guan Shan’s tongue than he thought they would, and He Tian’s stab of humour allows them to torrent.

‘That kinda faded eventually. Dad would go do what he needed, then we’d come here and play cards or read. He found that guitar in a second-hand music store. Restringed it, varnished it. I saved money from summer jobs and bought my own after—the whole thing.’ He twists a ring around his finger absently. ‘Honestly, I kinda forgot about the one he kept here. I stopped coming after he got locked up.’

‘Because it was too much?’

Guan Shan snorts. ‘Nope. Just never knew where the fucking place was. I didn’t see my dad for the first time ‘til I was, what, fourteen, maybe? He told me then.’ Guan Shan glances at He Tian. ‘It’s where I went before that fight I got in with those motherfuckers. Where you—y’know.’

‘You never told me that was why. That you went to visit him.’

‘Well, now you know. Sorry we didn’t trade shitty secrets and braid each other’s hair back then.’

He Tian rolls his eyes. ‘I’d tell you anything you wanted to know.’

‘Give me a break.’ He ticks it all off his fingers: ‘Never told me ‘bout your brother. Never told me you were leaving after the hospital. Don’t tell me about your job. Fuck you and your _anythings_.’

‘I’m serious, Guan Shan,’ He Tian says, Guan Shan’s name on his tongue turning a light on behind his ribcage. ‘If you needed to know something—if you really wanted to, I’d tell you.’

Something stern wraps around them, cracks and fissures in the material of what they’d made themselves out of—ribald humour and punches that don’t hold themselves back because that would be lying. Guan Shan has seen those punctures growing wider lately, making space for themselves in the fabric of their relationship and _fuck_ that word but it’s true. He knows how their conversations sit in place of what they used to be, faded volatility for things that go deeper, that scratch at the underside of Guan Shan’s skin in a way that doesn’t feel like a punch.

In ways, it’s worse.

In ways, it’s the fucking best thing that’s ever happened to him.

‘Used to wear this on a chain ‘round my neck,’ Guan Shan continues. He holds the key to the lot in his hand, turned warm in his pocket. ‘Then I started getting in fights where the winner got a prize, and I lost it.’

‘You won it back,’ He Tian guesses.

‘Stole it back,’ Guan Shan corrects. ‘Seventh grade. Stopped wearing it after that.’ He shifts. ‘I could’ve found this place if I wanted to. Me and my dad used to get the train a mile away and walk if it we were just hangin’ out. Couldn’t have been many industrial parks around by the coast. My mom probably knew, too, but I never asked her.’

There’s a pause. ‘You know… Jian Yi was brought here,’ He Tian says. ‘That last year in middle school when Zhengxi was all fucked up about him being gone. Some creep—’

‘Yeah, I know. He told me the summer before he left.’

He Tian cocks a brow. ‘You know. And you _still…_?’

‘Wouldn’t you?’ Guan Shan asked. ‘Jian Yi’s stronger than we give him credit for. He’s fucking obsessed with this whole band thing right now. I _think_ he can set aside shitty things that happened to him when he was a kid for this.’

He Tian surveys him carefully. Amber light splays over his face, a patchwork of orange flame and shadows that hide his eyes. He’s rendered unreadable, as usual. Guan Shan’s aware that He Tian’s actions are loud, his words quietly violent. His silence—more and more—unfathomable.

‘Are you two gonna come and play music or are we just here to gossip?’ Jian Yi calls over.

Guan Shan swears under his breath, caught out. He Tian, unbothered, pushes away from the shutter with a loose smile, leans close to Guan Shan’s ear.

‘Let’s rock ‘n fucking roll, sweetheart.’

 

* * *

 

It’s a clumsy, stilted start to their creation.

They play covers they know, bitty pieces of the Stone’s _Wild Horses_ , Bowie’s _Space Oddity_ , piecemeal homages to Aerosmith and Twisted Sister and Fleetwood Mac, and some harder jams that get He Tian’s fingers spinning over the strings and make Guan Shan’s slowness stop altogether.

He’s rusty, which he’d already warned them about. Restringing his father’s old acoustic took a while and made his fingers shake before they even started, and he let the quivering dizziness in his belly sit while they started playing and ignored the hesitations in his fingers and the slipping chords.

It takes them up to early afternoon, stop-start instrumentals saturating the small lot, Guan Shan perched on the sofa with his father’s guitar, Jian Yi sitting on the arm of it while he holds the wireless mic He Tian bought.

He sounds older when he sings, and it gets Zhengxi staring at him while he keeps a rhythm steady on the drums. Guan Shan rolls his eyes at them, but it keeps himself from looking at He Tian with his head bound over the fret of his electric, black and glossed and shuddering as it blares out the wired-up amp. It keeps himself from meeting He Tian’s gaze when it tries to meet his, every time Guan Shan offers harmonised backing vocals, gravelly but in-tune.

The heater is struggling by mid-afternoon, and He Tian and Guan Shan offer to make a run to the convenience store with Zhengxi’s car.

‘I’ll buy you a new one if I crash it!’ He Tian calls behind him as he pulls up the shutter, car keys spinning around his index finger.

‘That’s not the fucking point!’ Zhengxi shouts back, and makes a show of faux-throwing a drumstick at him.

He Tian doesn’t duck.

They load up on sandwiches, candy bars, bottles of water and energy drinks. The ride is more comfortable than Guan Shan likes to admit; He Tian takes to the car like it’s his own, hand loose on the gearstick, arm resting on the door frame, lo-fi playing through the bluetooth on He Tian’s phone, his confidence bordering on laziness in a way that makes Guan Shan feel unfairly _safe._

They pilfer quickly through the local 7-Eleven; He Tian swipes his card on checkout, and they clamber back into the car within minutes, He Tian cranking up the heater once the engine’s on.

He doesn’t put the car into gear or pull away from the lot, but his remixed lo-fi starts up again, and they listen to it for a quiet few moments without looking at each other.

_—only fools rush in… And I… Can’t… Help… Falling in love… With…_

‘I’d be cool with weekends like this,’ He Tian says, starting up the engine and pulling out onto the street.

Guan Shan chews on a strip of gum. ‘Yeah? Like what?’

He Tian shrugs. ‘Playing music, hanging out.’ He pauses to light up a cigarette, and cracks the window open slightly, bitter air seeping in, smoke curling in front of Guan Shan’s face. ‘Getting to be with you.’

The cold air that streams past is nonexistent now; Guan Shan becomes only acutely aware of the heat flooding his skin, banks burst, the way his skin feels stretched too tightly over his bones like He Tian can see his skeleton and everything else he’s made of.

The anger follows closely behind, swift on his heels as always. Anger at himself for the lack of revulsion, for allowing He Tian’s words to still hold their power. For the defeatism of— _there’s nothing I can do anymore. This is gonna happen._ For the blinking light inside of him like a lighthouse that said he wanted it to.

He swallows, throat dry, nearly chokes on his gum until He Tian passes him a water bottle with a stupid fucking smirk. Not arrogant as much as _pleased_.

‘The sound isn’t right,’ Guan Shan says, wiping his mouth.

He Tian pauses, recenters himself, nods like this was the conversation they’d been having the whole time.

‘I get what you’re saying,’ He Tian says. ‘We’re imitating right now. It’s not the real thing.’

‘It’s good to see what we can fuckin’ do. See where we’re all at with our skills. I was kinda worried we were all gonna be as shit as me.’

He Tian frowns, eyes fixed on the road. ‘What the hell are you talking about? You’re _good,_ Guan Shan. You’re talented. Not playing in years makes you rusty, but it doesn’t mean you’re shit.’

‘Compared to you?’ Guan Shan clicks his tongue, rests his head on the window. ‘I’m nothin’.’

_Always will be._

‘Don’t fucking do that,’ He Tian mutters darkly. ‘Don’t put yourself down around me.’

Guan Shan snorts. ‘Like that wasn’t your speciality?’

Like He Tian didn’t put him down so he could be the one to pick him up again. Like Guan Shan didn’t understand what it had all been as he got older.

‘What are you talking about?’

Guan Shan rolls his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He points. ‘Take a left here.’

He Tian answers by throwing out his half-finished cigarette into the street, jaw tight, and puts the window back up.

 _Well done,_ Guan Shan thinks. Things were good a minute ago. _He’d_ felt good. Now the coldness is back, and Guan Shan’s clothes smell of cigarettes and he wants to go home. He thinks about the Japanese art of _kintsugi_ , the repairing of broken pottery with all the new fractures glued together with gold, scars on show, and thinks he sees himself in that. Fractured and fragmented, every break and self-conflicted ruin made obvious and luminous.

What will happen, he wonders, when there are no more breaks and he’s more glue than ceramic? Will he still be able to hold himself together? If he can’t, at least there won’t be another moment like this. Another minute where he doesn’t run his mouth and let the bitterness seep out and force something good to bad.

They pull back up to the garage in the industrial estate, Guan Shan pushing wordlessly inside with He Tian lingering behind him. Jian Yi and Zhengxi have their heads bowed close over Jian Yi’s phone, sheet music splayed brightly on the screen, strands of their hair brushing each other’s face, and neither of them seem to mind.

They look up at the sound of the shutter, and descend ravenously on He Tian and Guan Shan’s convenience store goods. Patti Smith sings restlessly through a portable speaker while they eat, Jian Yi and He Tian on the sofa, Zhengxi and Guan Shan cross-legged on the floor. Jian Yi thieves at Zhengxi’s fried vegetable crisps with impish pleasure, and He Tian takes more drags from a cigarette than bites from his breakfast burrito, using the empty can of an energy drink as an ashtray.

‘Guan Shan thinks our sound is off,’ He Tian tells them, when the conversation has shifted from last night’s basketball game to reminiscing over Vine videos.

Jian Yi wipes the grease from his falafel wrap into his jeans. ‘Off?’ he says, chewing without covering his mouth.

‘Shut up,’ Guan Shan mutters, shooting a glare at He Tian. ‘I said it wasn’t _right._ We’re not a tribute band.’

‘Covers are good,’ Zhengxi points out. ‘They’re useful.’ He leans back on his hands. ‘They’re like a sandpit—we can take someone else’s work and make it our own. Figure out what we’re doing that _makes_ it our own. And then actually make our own.’

‘I never said they weren’t useful,’ Guan Shan says. He throws a balled-up napkin at He Tian. ‘Thanks a fucking lot.’

He Tian shrugs, flicking the napkin away. He’s smirking. ‘You resent shit that you don’t say out loud. But don’t worry, Mo Guan Shan,’ he croons, leaning forward, patting a hand on Guan Shan’s shoulder. ‘You have me to say it for you.’

Guan Shan makes a _tsch_ sound, pushing to his feet and away from their little picnic, a middle finger thrown backwards at He Tian. He frowns at his father’s guitar, propped up against the wall, and kicks the toe of his shoe into the cement floor. The thing with small rooms full of people is that there’s nowhere to run.

‘Why don’t we just jam?’ Jian Yi suggests. ‘See what happens. That’s what this is for, right? Playing music. Anyone’s—or ours.’

 _And the money,_ Guan Shan thinks, because he’s the only one that has to be realistic here. He’s handling three jobs and a missed rent payment that will put them out on the street if the landlord decides to call. He’s not like the rest of them, able to drop everything for a whim and a dream that he hasn’t prodded at since he was a kid when _life_ didn’t get to him.

It won’t work like that for him. _Starving artist_ would be too literal, and he’s not going to beg He Tian or any of the others for scraps.

Probably, He Tian can read all this from the slope of his shoulders, the clouded flames of his eyes and the tautness of his mouth where he chews on the inside of his cheek.

‘Sure,’ He Tian says for all of them, and then they’re clearing away plastic wrappers and empty bottles and picking up their instruments again. Patti Smith’s _Because the Night_ is cut away like a door’s been shut— _come on now try and understand, the way I feel under your—_ and the space becomes theirs again.

Anticipation shifts among them with darting glances.

‘So, do we just…?’ Zhengxi asks, faking a playing motion with the drumsticks and then He Tian’s shrugging and plucking chords out on his electric in a steady rhythm that allows the rest of them to catch up.

They join in, one-by-one, a cautious offering that’s harmonising but uninteresting and a little flat, until He Tian switches key, and Zhengxi hastens his playing and throws in a snare roll and doubles the beat.

They’re not playing fast; whatever it is could pass as a ballad or something quaintly indie, but He Tian starts playing like he acts: goading, edging people towards action. _Go on,_ it says. _Jump._ It’s the way he talks to Guan Shan—a dangerous tease that prompts him into rashness and volatility, playing with a matchbox so he can lean back and watch everything burn.

And it works.

Casual rhythm turns into a challenge of who can prove their worth; who can take the bait and make themselves noticed but not enough that its ruinous. He Tian’s fingers are summoning over the guitar, a grinning Pied Piper while they answer him with everything they’ve got, Jian Yi’s wordless vocals tripping over themselves to become words, drum skin thuds prompting their heartbeats, and then it manifests itself around them.

> _I know you’re gonna be like him._  
>  _Tryin’ out your promises while I keep tryin’ to swim._  
>  _And it was like that for a while,_  
>  _While we rolled in the dust,_  
>  _Those promises latched on heart strings,_  
>  _And I just kept thinkin’ every time,_  
>  _Please God give me fuckin’ wings._
> 
> _And I know it’s cliché,_  
>  _That I still wanna see your face,_  
>  _When all you do is hurt me and all I do is hurt you,_  
>  _And all we do is say that, “It’s o-kay.”_

There’s silence when Guan Shan opens his eyes. No one’s playing a thing, and the staticy emptiness of the amp fills the garage.

 _‘Damn_ ,’ Jian Yi whispers, mic held limply in his hand. Zhengxi’s hands are locked on the back of his head, drumsticks abandoned, eyes wide—and then there’s He Tian.

Glittering and dark and _wanting_ , and Guan Shan thinks, _Fuck._

 

* * *

 

_‘Guan Shan, wait!’_

_‘Fuck off!’_

His heartbeat is pounding in his ears. He couldn’t get the shutter open fast enough—couldn’t get his feet to move fast enough beneath him until the cold didn’t matter anymore and nausea rolled through his stomach and the lyrics rolled through his head.

He knows he’s fast, a youth spent weaving through alleyways and ducking under loaded punches, but he knows that He Tian, who can throw himself over eight-foot fences and climb up walls and chase down a pack of men like a greyhound, is faster.

It doesn’t take him long to grab Guan Shan by the arm, gravel skidding under the feet with the shuddering stop, his grip bruising and unyielding.

It hurts Guan Shan to yank his arm from He Tian’s hold, and He Tian doesn’t reach for him again.

They stare at each other, their breath clouding fast and thick from their mouths.

‘Come back,’ He Tian says softly. ‘Stop being a shit and come back and play—’

Guan Shan swipes out: ‘Thought I told you to fuck off.’

He Tian sets his feet apart. _This is how it’s going to be,_ the movement says. It’s a fighting-ready stance, physical and verbal, and Guan Shan’s learned to rely on He Tian’s movements more than his words.

‘Come back before I drag you back,’ He Tian says. ‘We were doing good. You were good.’

Guan Shan narrows his eyes. ‘Thanks for your fucking _validation_.’

He Tian’s look is blank, mildly confused. Guan Shan can’t admit to himself—to either of them—that he’s confused too. He doesn’t know where _they_ came from. He doesn’t know why he ran. But something about the honesty of it all coming out without his authority, bared to the rest of them, set a siren in his head that said he had to _get out now_. Because there had been so much more left to speak itself—a whole four minutes of it; a whole discography of honesty, and Guan Shan fucking _refused_ to let it have a voice.

Honesty is vulnerability. Honesty gives everyone something to play with and fuck him over with. Honesty lets He Tian use him how he wants because he knows it’s all true.

Guan Shan starts to turn, and then He Tian’s hands are on his shoulders, spinning him around.

‘The fuck crawled up _your_ ass?’ He Tian asks.

Guan Shan wrenches free. ‘Why can’t you just leave me the fuck alone for once?’ Questions spill into the rest of him: _Why are you always in my head? Why do I have to think about you even when I’m not thinking about you?_

‘Those lyrics were about me, weren’t they,’ He Tian states. ‘That’s why you’re angry.’

Guan Shan moves in reverse—he gets closer, their faces almost touching. Guan Shan swallows cigarettes and the sugared, cherry-toxicity of He Tian’s energy drink, and his heart hammers while He Tian’s pupils dilate.

‘Have you ever fuckin’ thought,’ Guan Shan grits out, ‘that not everyone wants to make somethin’ about _you_?’

He Tian’s eyes dart to Guan Shan’s lips. ‘I want to make things about you,’ he says.

Guan Shan shakes his head. ‘No, you don’t. Not really. Don’t pretend you’re not as selfish as we all know you are. Everything always comes back to you and what you want.’ He steps back, spreads his arms out. ‘Actually, you know what? You wanna think it’s about you, like always? _Fine_. _It’s about you._ Always is. Always will be. That’s what we’re _all_ fucking here for. Is that what you wanna hear?’

He Tian’s expression is dark, and warning. ‘I think you’ve said enough.’

‘Yeah, I think I have,’ Guan Shan says, and this time when he turns away, He Tian doesn’t stop him.

‘Where are you going?’ He Tian calls after him.

Guan Shan throws his anger over his shoulder: ‘I’ll get the fucking train!’

 _‘Fine!’_ He Tian shouts back, and the anger Guan Shan can hear is genuine, and the most honest thing Guan Shan has heard from him in a while. ‘Fucking _walk_ home!’

 

* * *

 

The thing is, they don’t know how to survive each other. They’re tectonic plates that are always going to shape and reshape and shatter what’s on the surface, lifting their heads to see the ruin when it’s too late and turning back isn’t viable anymore.

Guan Shan knows it’s a pretty metaphor for saying they’re not good for each other. They don’t know how to be. He knows it’s a painful existence when they both want to try.

It’s what makes him dial He Tian’s number when he’s home, three hours later and aching and tired in so many fucking ways, and it’s what makes the realisation seep through so clearly when he stares up at his ceiling and wishes he could see stars: He Tian’s gotten better, and he’s gotten worse.

He can’t remember the last time He Tian hurt him; the last time he made Guan Shan do something he didn’t want to even if he _did_. He can’t remember the last time He Tian did something that made him scared. That fifteen-year-old kid only exists in fragments now, behaviour trained out of him as well as the rest of him was trained in.

The realisation is that He Tian grew out of it, for the most part, and Guan Shan’s still pulling the same shit he started since his dad got locked up.

He’s not surprised when He Tian picks up after the first ring.

‘It’s me,’ he says.

‘Yeah,’ He Tian replies, voice quiet.

‘I’m back.’

Guan Shan gets silence in return, and for some reason it makes him press his forehead into his shoulder.

‘I’m sorry for what I said,’ he murmurs. For some reason, it’s easier to say with his eyes closed.

‘Yeah.’ There’s the sound of rustling fabric, of limbs shifting and a body readjusting itself. ‘Want to tell me why you said it?’

Guan Shan swallows. ‘Is this what we do now?’ he asks hollowly. ‘Talk about our _feelings?_ ’

He Tian’s breathing is loud through the speaker. ‘If you were planning on making an actual apology, it’s something you could try.’

Guan Shan squeezes his eyes tighter. Whatever made it so easy to sing earlier—whatever made it easy for truth to come out is locked now, and Guan Shan doesn’t know what key he used to get it open. He knows himself well enough that using a crowbar and force would only shut it tighter.

 _Haven’t you ever thought,_ he wants to ask, _that it’s easier for me to use anger and pain because it’s better than nothing at all?_

But: ‘This is stupid,’ is what he says. ‘I’m going to sleep.’

And hangs up.

 

* * *

 

They don’t speak for a week. Guan Shan distracts himself with work, taking on extra shifts and taking on the night calls when the air outside is bitter and tiredness drags behind his eyes. It makes him sluggish and muted and cracks the skin of his knuckles, and he leaks blood into the sink when he washes his hands for the fifth time in a morning.

The lyrics still slip through the cracks when he’s unaware—he finds himself humming them while he cleans an office complex, shifting and adding refrains and new verses when he’s trying to catch a few hours of sleep, sings it at breakfast where he’s rewarded with his mother’s bemused, pleased smile.

He smokes resentfully and quickly during his break at a downtown restaurant on Friday afternoon, propping the fire exit open with an empty beer crate that he thumps himself down onto, back hunched.

His phone is vibrating in his pocket for the fifth time on his shift as he slides it out, frustrated, swiping to answer.

‘The fuck do you want?’ he gripes into the speaker.

‘I’ve been calling you for half an hour. Where the hell are you?’

‘The fuck are you talking about?’ Guan Shan asks Zhengxi, glaring at the dirtied brick wall in front of him, greasy kitchen fumes and the stench of rotten fruit coating the cool air, blue skies and a fading sun staring down at him. ‘I’m at work. That thing people like me do to make money so they can live, yeah?’

‘You told Jian Yi you were free today for practice. We’re at the garage.’

A beat of silence. ‘Fuck,’ Guan Shan mutters, eyes shuttering. His head knocks painfully against the edge of the fire door, grounding. ‘I forgot,’ he tells Zhengxi. ‘I took an extra shift after taking the weekend off with you guys.’

‘And that’s what you want me to tell Jian Yi, yeah? That you’re working?’

Guilt pricks at him. There’s something marginally painful about wiping Jian Yi’s smile from his face—about building a swell of disappointment in his chest. There’s something painful about disappointing someone so ineffectually happy with his own inadequacies. His mother’s face swims in his head.

‘Yeah,’ he pushes out. He needs the money; he’s not going to apologise for putting rent over a rehearsal, but he means it. He said one thing and did another, and that unreliability—that dishonesty—makes him say it: ‘Sorry.’

Zhengxi takes it. ‘And I’ll tell him the same about He Tian?’

Guan Shan pauses. ‘Huh?’

‘I’ll tell Jian Yi that he’s working too? Since you’re both not here.’

A cloud rolls itself over the sun, clouding the alleyway in further darkness, already dim from the cramped crowding of buildings and overhanging of balconies and clothes lines and telephone wires.

‘You implying something, Zhan?’ Guan Shan asks quietly.

‘I’m saying it’s convenient.’

Guan Shan puts his mouth closer to the speaker, fingers tightening. ‘I told you I was working. You think I’m a fucking liar?’

He can hear Zhengxi’s confusion: ‘If he’s really not with you, then where the hell is he?’

‘How the fuck should I know?’ Guan Shan demands. ‘I’m not his fuckin’ keeper.’

‘Come on, you’re _always_ together.’

‘Bullshit,’ Guan Shan spits. Is that what the fucker’s been telling them?

‘Fine, fine. Whatever,’ Zhengxi concedes. ‘But if you get hold of him, tell him to get his ass over here.’

‘Fine. Whatever.’

Guan Shan hangs up, and his phone sits limply in his palm. His confusion mirrors Zhengxi’s. If He Tian isn’t there like he said he’d be, where the fuck is he? He Tian’s unpredictability had never made him unreliable; his dependency makes him frighteningly loyal, and there’s a sticky residue left behind in labelling him with that quality.

Guan Shan’s not _concerned_ about him—he isn’t. But they haven’t spoken since the weekend, and it’s not like He Tian to avoid him after a fight. He operates like a hunter—consumed by a drop of blood to get at the veins with an insatiable persistence.

 _where tf are u?_ he texts He Tian, a minute or two before his break is over, something digging at him, a phantom scratch he can’t itch that doesn’t lift even once he’s hit send.

 

* * *

 

Guan Shan eats dinner with his mom that evening. It’s rare that they get to do this—cooking together, eating, Guan Shan ignoring the looks his mom gives him like she’s seeing him cutting vegetables on the counter and picturing someone else. For weeks their schedules slip past, night and early-morning shifts out of sync, their interaction dissolving into handwritten notes on the fridge door and odd-hour text messages, their presence marked by steam on the mirror or a cup in the sink.

It’s rare they get to sit across from one another, so Guan Shan hates it when his phone finally vibrates on the kitchen table, and all he can think about is checking it.

‘Go ahead,’ his mom says, the vibration repeating for a third time, Guan Shan’s stiff glances a giveaway, and he flips it over.

When He Tian’s name flashes on the screen, the world shifts sideways for a second.

 _Hey. I got caught up in family stuff_ , the text reads. _Couldn’t get out of it. I’ve messaged Jian Yi. Worried about me? ;)_

It shouldn’t, but the question catches him off guard, makes his face flame, and anger licks at the underside of his skin.

 _just checking u weren’t dead,_ he starts to type, but then pauses, backspaces.

He reads He Tian’s message over again, and uncertainty wells. His family? That uncertain cohort of men with knives and guns and tattoo-covered skin that He Tian seems to pledge an allegiance to? Men with money and power and weapons that can’t be held and an influence that makes He Tian seem darker every time he comes back.

Guan Shan remembers He Tian leaving for weeks at a time, how every time something had been chipped away, how the ribald kid Guan Shan recognised was less, the teasing tinged dark as an ink spill, the air around him coated and blood-warm.

 _thought you weren’t working for them anymore?_ he sends instead. _thought you gave it up._

 _It’s not as easy as that,_ He Tian replies. _My brother found out & I can’t drop everything. _

Guan Shan tells him he knows what that’s like, and his heart stammers when He Tian leaves him on read, the typing bubble flitting in and out of existence.

Guan Shan’s fingers skid over the screen keyboard: _i didnt mean to say that like our problems are the same.. they’re not._

 _I know,_ He Tian says. _We’ve all got our shit going on._

They don’t say anything to each other for a few minutes, and Guan Shan finishes his food and helps his mom put away leftovers and load the dishwasher, feeling like the conversation is unfinished, the hot charge of a storm not yet raging, rain still building in the clouds.

‘Everything okay?’ his mom asks him, never pressing too hard. Never pushing.

‘Yeah, fine,’ he says, shrugging off the hunch knotting the muscles in his shoulder blades. ‘Just tired. Thanks for dinner, Mom.’

They part ways, the quiet hum of a newsreader coming from the TV in his mom’s bedroom, light leaking under her door as she gets ready for her hospital shift in the morning. Guan Shan stands in the empty kitchen and listens to her humming something pop-y from the charts, remembers how she used to sing in the car when she dropped him to school, belting out mangled English lyrics—Bonnie Tyler and Stevie Nicks and Kate Bush and Annie Lenox—that blasted through the car’s shitty speakers, auburn hair whipping around her face with the windows down, the sound cranked up loud enough to draw scowls from the other mothers milling in the parking lot, and Guan Shan had been so sure his mom was some beautiful, glamorous, seventies rockstar that his dad had been so fucking lucky to find and make his own.

He thinks how she’s quieter now, softer, older around the edges in a blurred way—memory and reality trying to co-exist. How so much changed after his dad left.

Guan Shan runs a hand over his face.

When he picks his phone up again from the table, there’s an unread message from eight minutes ago, and Guan Shan realises he’s been half-expecting it.

_Can I come over?_

Guan Shan doesn’t ask why. The reply is sent before he remembers moving his fingers.

_i’ll buzz u in._

 

* * *

 

Their knees knock together on Guan Shan’s bedroom floor. Guan Shan remembers it being bigger when they used to cram in front of his PS4 and play _Diablo_ and _Call of Duty_ , eyes bloodshot and the grey haze of dawn starting to settle as they fell asleep against his bed with morning birdsong and a waking city as a lullaby. He guesses they’ve grown since, bottles of beer sweating between their folded legs, guitars replacing the controllers.

They could sit on the bed, but there’s too much in that, and they’re familiar with this. _This_ keeps them to two guys who played video games a few summers ago, long enough for Guan Shan to see sunrise catching on He Tian’s closed eyelids.

‘My mom’s asleep,’ Guan Shan told He Tian when he opened the apartment door, He Tian with two guitar cases slung over his back.

He Tian had rolled his eyes and whispered, conspiratorially, ‘I know how to be quiet.’

Guan Shan let him through with a lump in his throat, swallowing the words down, thinking about the dark circles he’d glimpsed under He Tian’s eyes, the scabbed cut on his lip, how he smelled of cigarettes and too much body spray like there was a sickness he was trying to keep covered.

‘It has my name on,’ Guan Shan says now, running his fingers along the smooth wood of the guitar in his lap, the indentation where his name is carved.

‘Does it?’ He Tian says. At Guan Shan’s glare, he smirks, take a swig from his bottle. ‘I bought it years ago,’ he admits. ‘Saw you looking through a window back in middle school and—’ He shrugs. ‘It suits you.’

It’s an electric acoustic, well-varnished and clean, the thrum of the strings clear and strong. It feels strange to hold it, knowing it’s been sitting with his name on somewhere in He Tian’s empty apartment for years, knowing He Tian might have held it, imagined Guan Shan holding it, knowing he was observant enough to have gotten him something Guan Shan might have wanted for once.

Guan Shan plucks out a soft, fiddly tune that lilts in the dark space of his bedroom, shutters drawn against the cool night air.

‘When did you even start playing?’ Guan Shan asks. ‘Never knew _you_ fucking played until a few weeks ago.’

He Tian copies the notes, mimicking in a playful way that could be sweet if it weren’t him and his fingers and his sly smile.

‘I took lessons as a kid,’ he tells Guan Shan, head at an angle that allows him to flick his gaze between Guan Shan and the strings. ‘Traditional, of course. Piano and violin, too. Martial arts. Fine art. Chess. You name it.’

‘Privileged fucker.’

He Tian smiles at that. ‘Yeah, you’d like to think. But I wasn’t really interested in the guitar until the end of middle school. I saw you looking at the window with this—this look. And first, I remembered thinking I wanted you to look at me like that. This—this longing like you didn’t want anyone to see. And then I remembered thinking about us playing together. Like this. That’s what I wanted.’

Guan Shan stares at him. ‘You spent four years learning so we could—have this?’ he asks. And then, breathy, ‘You’re... so fucking weird.’

He Tian shrugs. ‘I liked you. Still do.’

‘You should give up.’

‘Nah,’ He Tian says, leaning back against the bed, a heavy lidded-gaze that would have suggested at solemn drunkenness if his first bottle wasn’t still half-full and Guan Shan didn’t know heady longing when he saw it. ‘That’s not in my nature.’

Guan Shan wrinkles his nose. ‘Didn’t your mother ever teach you know that no means no?’

He Tian inclines his head at him, beer raised with an allowing tilt. ‘But you haven’t said no.’

Guan Shan swallows. Fuck him, he’s right. And fuck him, Guan Shan can’t say it, and they both know it. He could twist around and brush back He Tian’s bangs from his face and push their mouths together with the kind of violence they’ve always known, and that would be it. A deal sealed. Cue the fireworks and the grappling hands and the hot mouthing on each other’s necks. And what then? What becomes of them then?

Guan Shan adjusts the guitar in his lap. ‘Are we playing or not?’

He Tian chuckles bitterly. ‘Sure, Guan Shan. Let’s play.’

They down the rest of their beers, reach up to let the bottles drip condensation onto Guan Shan’s desk, and it’s not long before they find themselves plucking out the same makeshift tune as last weekend. It’s not an accident. Guan Shan knows He Tian has led them there, urging them towards this finale, prompting the lyrics Guan Shan sang before to make their second appearance.

This version is quieter in Guan Shan’s bedroom—no echo, no mic, no amp to thrill every sound of their strings. There was an emotion to the lyrics before, a rowdy confidence singular to rock music that Guan Shan saw so innately presented in his mother—which he doesn’t think he’ll ever be capable of matching—and which can’t be expressed in this hush. This has to be screamed, backed up with electric riffs and heavy drum fills, raw and exposed and unselfconsciously open.

It feels too fragile when Guan Shan sings, _‘All you do is hurt me, and all I do is hurt you…_ ’ and his voice shakes in an effort not to wake his mom up.

Shakes when the second verse makes itself known:

> _Above us there’s this sky full of souls_  
>  _And I’m hoping we might come out of this whole_  
>  _But I saw what happened to him_  
>  _And I see what’s happenin’ to you_  
>  _Cut up and fucked up and tryin’ for right_  
>  _When everything’s always pushing for wrong_  
>  _And fuck please tell me we don’t have to be strong_

He Tian’s guitar is an answering voice, pulling Guan Shan through it, glancing up on only a handful of notes, and it is fragile; it feels breakable and too close. But they’ll have this for now, this simplicity. Guan Shan will hide this moment away, and he’ll lock the memory off now before it gets ruined. Before He Tian does something—says something. Before Guan Shan starts throwing punches and shatters it all again.

‘Are you about to run off again?’

Guan Shan stops playing. He Tian has his elbow on the bed, head propped against his hand. He must have set his guitar down a while ago. The unknowingness of being watched makes the room warm and vacuum-empty.

‘No,’ Guan Shan tells him. ‘I’m good.’

‘Yeah,’ says He Tian, looking at him. Just looking. He drags a thumbnail over his lower lip. ‘Jian Yi said something to me about you writing our lyrics. I think he’s right. I think you’re talented and we need that.’

‘I dunno,’ Guan Shan mutters. There’s a responsibility to that weighing heavy on him. There’s a consciousness that he’d be pulling something from himself every time and put into the voice of a band, and bared to a crowd.

‘Do you write or just—come up with it?’ He Tian asks.

‘If there’s a tune, I can put words to it,’ Guan Shan tries to explain, nails dipping into the etchings of his name. ‘I dunno, it sounds fucking stupid like that but—’

‘It doesn’t.’

When Guan Shan just frowns at him, He Tian gets elegantly to his feet, all limbs, and heads out onto Guan Shan’s balcony for a cigarette. The sliding door is left only slightly cracked open in invitation. After a moment, Guan Shan follows him.

It’s cool outside, and Guan Shan’s grateful the humidity of summer has lifted, wet closeness on his skin replaced with goosebumps, and an excuse to stand a little too close to He Tian who emits warmth like an electric heater, elbows on the icy metal of the balcony. Crowds of apartments stare back at them, lights sifting from behind gauzy curtains and the cracks of blinds, Guan Shan’s breath luminous from bright billboards, the sliver of moon that smiles down at them.

He’s grateful for the darkening evenings; light can’t chase them into morning and remind them that another day is here. Darkness lets them pretend a moment can last forever.

He Tian smokes through a cigarette, and then another, and the silence fits them well.

‘Will you let us use it?’ He Tian asks.

Guan Shan, staring down at the pavements below, asks what he means.

‘The song. Your song.’

Guan Shan rolls his eyes. ‘’m not sentimental,’ he mutters. ‘Do what the fuck you want with it. I don’t give a shit.’

He Tian exhales smoke, flicks ash down the side of the balcony. ‘You don’t give a shit about Jian Yi singing your thoughts and feelings to a crowd? Recorded in a studio and _sold?’_

Guan Shan knocks his shoulder against He Tian’s. ‘It’s not my fault you three can’t write a song for shit.’ He doesn’t let the touch linger and stands upright, stretches his arms above his head with his hands interlocked, a flash of pale, freckled skin baring itself, moon crescents peeking through patches of cloud, and shivers as the city casts a breeze over his skin. His arms drop back to the railing.

He Tian’s looking at him—like _that_ , and Guan Shan knows it, is warmed by it, but in the way that says Guan Shan knows _exactly_ what he’d meant when he asked.

‘Look,’ Guan Shan says. ‘It doesn’t matter enough to me. You can all think what you want. And anyone listening is gonna think what they want because they’re all a bunch of judgmental motherfuckers.’

It beckons a smile on He Tian’s tired-looking face. ‘You’re talking about lyrical interpretation.’

‘I’m talking about people.’

He Tian just shrugs, and packs away his cigarettes and lighter in the back pocket of his jeans. When he pulls out his phone to check the time, he swears.

‘How the fuck is it one o’clock?’ he mutters.

Guan Shan straightens. ‘Somewhere to go?’

‘No, just—’ He Tian drags a hand through his hair. ‘You have work at five, right?’

Guan Shan narrows his eyes. ‘How’d you know that?’

He Tian gives him a pitying smile that says, _Please._

They head back into Guan Shan’s bedroom, and He Tian shrugs on his jacket, shoulders the case of his own guitar, Guan Shan’s gifted one left on the bed, and glances around the room like he’s committing the walls to memory.

‘You can crash on the couch if you want,’ Guan Shan offers. ‘My mom’s got a late shift tomorrow.’

Something tugs at him on the inside when he sees that He Tian’s _hesitating._ Sees that some part of him wants to say yes, that most of him is saying no. Six years younger, and he would’ve jumped at the opportunity. Six years younger, and he would’ve invited himself over into Guan Shan’s bed on his own intuition and Guan Shan would have riled at the thought of He Tian stepping foot in his home.

‘I should go,’ He Tian says quietly. He deliberates in the doorway of Guan Shan’s bedroom, and there are shadows that fill his face so fully that he looks like a stranger.

Guan Shan says, ‘If you want to.’

He’s putting this in He Tian’s hands, letting him choose, and he knows this is strange and hard for him—when has He Tian ever been given the choice? He’s always taken what he wants without asking, without waiting for an offer. Given it, he doesn’t know what to do, holds it in his hands like a bird with a broken wing, too young to have left the nest.

‘I’ll call you,’ He Tian says, and Guan Shan says, ‘Okay.’

The door clicks to locked behind him.

Silence fills the apartment in the same way Guan Shan imagines space would be: a complete absence of sound, a privation of it, a lack of something so profound that it’s hard to conjure up the replica memory of what’s missing, swallowed up by some huge star that thrived on light and noise and the smallest suggestion of being alive.

Guan Shan’s breath rattles through his ribcage, and his room smells of cigarettes when he returns to it, chilled by the open balcony door, curtains shifting in the breeze.

He shuts it, cleans away the beer bottles into the recycling, and slumps limbless onto his bed. His phone is silent and dark in his hand, and the minutes stretch heavy enough for Guan Shan to feel how time passes, some imperceptible pull that makes him aware of gravity, of the sun’s slow approach, of how quickly the night between them had been wasted.

_If that was wasted time, I’d be happy to waste a life like it._

Guan Shan jolts up, pulse in his throat, and that solitary thought plays like a lyric in his head and ends with: _Fucking seriously?_

‘Abso-fucking-lutely not,’ he mutters to himself, clambering to his feet until his fingers are scrambling across the cluttered surface of his desk for an empty notepad and pen, and then he’s throwing himself back down onto the floor, reaching for his guitar—and he starts to write.

 

* * *

 

They don’t see each other again until next Friday night. Guan Shan gets there early via a series of trains and buses, He Tian comes on his bike, and Zhengxi and Jian Yi arrive together in the car. Changes have been made, new furniture to replace the threadbare couch and armchair, fresh paint on the walls, a security alarm built into the new automatic shutter, and a glass screen that comes down to let in light and keep out the cold.

Guan Shan doesn’t mind the changes; it was all secondhand and stank of damp and dust, and the familiarity of the place was a lingering, half-remembered memory, but frustration flares that He Tian would just _do it_ without asking, and it takes a moment of processing before he can step fully inside the garage. None of it changes the fact that they’re playing in an old lot on an industrial estate, but it changes the fact that the space isn’t Guan Shan’s and his father’s anymore. It’s theirs.

Jian Yi shows up with a tray of coffees in one hand—one saccharine sweet, two blacks, one with milk—and a thick binder in the other. Zhengxi trails behind with his keys looped around his finger and whistles.

‘Nice digs,’ he says admiringly. He runs a hand over the newly installed heater like it’s the glossed surface of a grand piano. ‘At least we won’t freeze to death now.’

‘Don’t be a pussy,’ Guan Shan says, at the same time He Tian says, ‘Yeah, you’re fucking welcome.’

He Tian’s tucking a cigarette behind his ear and setting his motorbike helmet down, wrapped up in leathers that fill out his shoulders and draw too much attention to his thighs.

‘He Tian getting his hands dirty for DIY?’ Jian Yi teases, handing out coffee. ‘Has the day _really_ come?’

‘That’s arrogant of you,’ Guan Shan said, folding his hands around the warmth of his cup. ‘Didn’t you know money gets you everything?’

He Tian snorts. ‘That’s simple thinking,’ he says, strapping open the velcro of his padded leather jacket. ‘Consider the theory that I can get people to do things for me _with_ my hands.’

Jian Yi’s eyes are bright as witchlight. ‘Sounds fake,’ he says. ‘What kind of things?’

The corner of He Tian’s mouth lifts. He folds the jacket over the back of the new armchair and glances in Guan Shan’s direction. ‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’

‘Are you two done?’ Zhengxi gripes. He takes his own coffee from the tray without behind handed it, and Jian Yi’s smile turns contrite and apologetic as Zhengxi settles down on the sofa.

‘What’s up with the binder?’ Guan Shan asks, jerking his head at the bulky stack of sheets in the folder. He takes the armchair, and He Tian is a close presence at his side, rain and cigarettes and dark shadows.

‘I’ve been writing all week,’ Jian Yi tells them, flopping down beside Zhengxi until their knees touch and he can throw a playful punch at his best friend’s arm. Zhengxi’s blue eyes soften. Guan Shan points a look at He Tian; He Tian sips his coffee. ‘There’s copies for all of you,’ Jian Yi says, distributing lyric sheets like pamphlets. ‘Tell me what you think.’

They take the printed sheets, leafing through in silence, and Guan Shan’s face screws up the more he reads. On paper, they’re just words. The rhythm is imagined, unrealised in text, and there’s a disconnect between meaning— _real_ meaning—and verse.

The truth is, they’re too much. Inauthentic imitators of a genre Jian Yi wants to be a part of but can’t speak from. The sixties and seventies have passed them; they don’t live there anymore, and never have. They don’t _know_ what it is to be speaking out for civil rights or shitty presidential elections _á la_ Springsteen and _I Don’t Like Mondays_ ’ school shootings.

They barely know love.

They aren’t snorting and popping and chasing their way through their twenties; they aren’t curling up with a bottle to soften the blow of reality. Except for Guan Shan, The Establishment and its Sabbath war pigs aren’t something they can shout out against. They haven’t got the voice. They don’t know how it sounds, don’t know the nuance and the accent. They’ve grown up on privilege and wealth and—and kidnappings and gangs and cigarettes and absentee fathers and occupied mothers and too many scars before they even reached fifteen, and which rock ‘n roll band ever spoke _that_ truth?

‘You don’t like them.’

Guan Shan’s head jerks up. The excited glimmer in Jian Yi’s eyes has faded as he looks at Guan Shan.

‘It’s—it’s not that,’ he says lamely. ‘They just don’t sound like the truth.’

Jian Yi’s brow draws together. ‘The truth?’

Guan Shan plucks a line from the page. ‘ _Didn’t look back on that open road, smoked one up said baby, where d’you wanna go?’_ Guan Shan says, ‘Is that you? Doesn’t _sound_ like you.’

‘Who said it had to be me?’ Jian Yi protests.

Guan Shan bristles. ‘Then whose fucking voice _is_ it?’

Zhengxi lets his bunch of sheets hit the floor with a sharp smack that echoes through the garage. ‘If you’re so unimpressed with all of this, Redhead, then what’ve _you_ got?’

‘Zhengxi—’

Zhengxi puts his arm across Jian Yi’s chest like a barrier. ‘No. You want to make music, Jian Yi. That’s it. You want something that’s creative and distracting and you want to do it with us. It’s not always about some stupid message that we’re trying to give to people.’

Guan Shan sticks his tongue into an open gum, the tooth knocked out when he was seventeen. ‘If you’re not trying to say something with music, then what’s the fucking point?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s— _there isn’t one,’_ Zhengxi bites out. It’s barely anger by Guan Shan’s own standards, but he’s never seen him wear this much emotion before. By the look on He Tian’s face—eyebrows raised—neither as he. ‘ _That’s_ the fucking point, alright? _It’s fun._ It’s—it’s something _good_ that’s not just about shining a light on all the bad. Just because you’ve got so much shit going on in your life doesn’t mean we all want to be singing about it, _alright_?’

The brutal honesty rings true, and Guan Shan feels like he’s been punched.

They’re fourteen and fifteen again, crowded at the back of the school after lessons have finished, tarmac and chain link fences bubbling under a hot sun, and everything’s in reverse: the rock sits in Zhengxi’s palm, there’s blood leaking into Guan Shan’s eyes, and there’s only ringing and stinging pain and a body weighing on top of him and the copper on his fingers telling him that something’s wrong.

‘Don’t speak to him like that.’

And that’s what changes it: He Tian at his side—on his side—a warm anchor that keeps Guan Shan steady.

Zhengxi’s on his feet. ‘Or what?’ he says in a low voice.

Guan Shan doesn’t have to look up to hear the smile in He Tian’s voice, wicked and honey-sweet and setting something below Guan Shan’s stomach only slightly aflame. ‘You don’t wanna know the answer to that.’

‘Yeah?’ Zhengxi counters. ‘Maybe I do, He Tian. Maybe we all want to know what it is you’re doing with your time. Maybe we _do_ want to know what shit you’ve gotten yourself into that you’re gonna pull us into, too.’

Jian Yi stands, pulling at the crook of Zhengxi’s arm. ‘Stop it, Zhengxi. He Tian. This was a bad idea. It’s—things are gone for us. They’ve passed. I’ve wasted all your time.’

He Tian and Zhengxi stare each other down, but there’s nothing more for them to say.

 _‘You_ gave up easy,’ Guan Shan remarks. They all look at him, but he’s only looking at Jian Yi. He waves the sheets of paper at him. ‘If you want this, then at least fucking _fight_ for it. D’you give up like that on everything else? ‘Cause it’s really pissing me off.’

Jian Yi mumbles his words. ‘I’m not fighting for something that only I want this time.’

Zhengxi is staring at him, mouth parted, and the tension tying knots between them all is louder than anything Guan Shan could’ve put into lyrics. This is layered and twisted so tightly it makes breathing difficult.

‘None of us said we didn’t,’ Zhengxi tells him. ‘We want this.’

He Tian, blatantly ignoring the roots twisting beneath that, puts his palm on the back of Guan Shan’s neck. His hand is warm, and Guan Shan can smell cigarettes and engine oil and something floral like hand soap, and he doesn’t pull away. He tells himself he won’t remember leaning into the touch, that indulging in it for a few seconds before he gets up and moves away doesn’t count.

He wanders over to pick up the guitar He Tian gave him, plugging it into an amp, and unfolds a crumpled piece of paper on one of the music stands, his handwriting messy and scrawled and nearly unreadable.

‘I have something new,’ Guan Shan says, catching their attention. ‘If everyone’s done with the dick-measuring contest…?’

He Tian perches on the edges of the armchair to face him, chuckling, and nods at him with something glittering in the dark sockets of his eyes.

‘Your stage awaits,’ he says dryly.

Guan Shan resists the urge to bow—scowls instead. It’s familiar.

It takes a minute or two to pick through the intro, remembering chords and the rhythm he’d wanted last night, but the feeling doesn’t take long to re-emerge, that tightness of loss, fingers scrabbling over the strings like they can’t move fast enough, can’t reach and clutch at fabric or skin, and he’s playing steady through the song, made electric with the amp, last night’s hushed softness forgotten and ripped out, and the first verse breaks out of him.

> _The night’s gone black and you’re not around_  
>  _No trace of you when I look down_  
>  _I don’t need help standin’ up_  
>  _Don’t need help getting unstuck_  
>  _Don’t need what you ain’t offerin’_  
>  _Don’t tell me I can’t do this alone_
> 
> _But next time I’m gonna reach out_  
>  _Ask you to stay with me_  
>  _Tell you I want you to_  
>  _Tell you my heart’s so fucking loud_  
>  _Tell you it’s yours if you want it too_  
>  _You don’t need me and fuck if I need you_  
>  _But that doesn’t mean I don’t want you to_  
>    
>  _So stay, please stay_  
>  _Don’t need you in my bed_  
>  _Don’t need your skin or voice in my head_  
>  _But stay, please stay_
> 
> _‘Cause we could do so much better_  
>  _Angry and callous and cruel_  
>  _But I’ll take you til we’re dead_  
>  _So stay, please stay_  
>  _We’ll keep taking on what’s ahead_

The guitar slips out into a riff, and then Guan Shan strums his fingers across the strings—and stops, skin vibrating on the thrumming strings. When the amp calms down, and the walls stop throwing Guan Shan’s voice back at him, the silence is so loud.

‘There’s more,’ Guan Shan says, clearing his throat, conscious of how much sound he’ll willingly make when it comes to music. He rests the guitar on the floor, holds the neck in his hand to keep it upright. ‘But I haven’t figured it out yet. The _so much better_ line needs tweaking. And I need you to get most of it, Jian Yi. I can’t hit some of those notes.’

‘Yeah, I can—I can do that.’ He’s grinning, and his voice softens. ‘And I get what you mean. About needing to mean it. About it being true.’

‘Your songs aren’t shit,’ Guan Shan says. His own words play back at him, and he hesitates. ‘They’re good. We could use them… with some changes?’

Jian Yi claps his hands together. ‘How’s _that_ for diplomacy?’ he beams.

Guan Shan flips his middle finger up. ‘Better?’

In the wake of Jian Yi’s laughter, Zhengxi kicks the toe of his shoe into the floor. ‘Sorry for going off at you, Red,’ he says. ‘You get why.’

He did. Jian Yi was a burnishing lantern easily snuffed out, and Guan Shan’s acerbic tongue added heat and fuel that was suffocating. Putting Jian Yi out was like kicking a puppy, and Guan Shan’s social inabilities—his _insensibilities—_ were a careless, swinging boot. Harmful when he wanted to be, harmful when he didn’t.

‘Whatever,’ he says.

Silence from He Tian is what draws his attention now, and that digs under his skin—the way nothingness makes Guan Shan look towards He Tian, mind and body leaning into him whether he’ll admit it or not, an implicit trust that He Tian will hold him up, be there to shut out madenning quietness, steer him onwards.

_We’ll keep taking on what’s ahead._

He Tian takes his cue, wanders over until his chest is at Guan Shan’s back.

His hand reaches out over Guan Shan’s shoulder, long fingers brushing over the crumpled piece of paper, fingertips tracing the inked handwriting. ‘When did you write this?’ he asks, the vibration of his vocals like guitar strings.

Guan Shan swallows. If he turns his face, He Tian’s lips will be on his skin. ‘Last week,’ he says. ‘After you left.’

‘Huh,’ says He Tian.

‘You were at Mo’s?’ Jian Yi asks, eyebrows disappearing beneath his blond hair. ‘Where was _our_ invite?’

Zhengxi sighs. ‘Pretty sure there wasn’t room for two more, Jian Yi,’ he says, and he’s not talking about the dimensions of the Mo’s apartment.

‘It wasn’t _like_ that,’ Guan Shan pushes out, face flaring.

He Tian’s lips are at his ear. ‘But I think you wanted it to be,’ he murmurs.

The closeness between them is suddenly optimal; with the precise movement of his arm, Guan Shan’s elbow lands sharply between He Tian’s ribs, and the dull exhale forced from his lungs is satisfying.

He shrugs. ‘Muscle spasm,’ he says and slips away.

He Tian could reach for him easily enough—could squeeze the vice grip of his hand around Guan Shan’s slim wrist and yank him back, but he only watches him go with his eyes glittering with dark promises. And then his phone rings.

Guan Shan’s stomach sinks.

‘Work?’ he asks, bitterness seeping into his voice. He’s not a stranger to the new cuts on He Tian’s knuckles that have appeared in the past weeks, or the burrowing shadows under his eyes that confirm exactly what Guan Shan thought: probably, He Tian never went home; his sense of courtesy at 1am had nothing to do with Guan Shan’s early start. He would have been picked up in a black SUV outside his apartment before dawn approached, and thrown back onto the pavement days later when he’d expended enough of whatever shrapnel soul he has left.

‘No,’ He Tian replies, momentarily thrown. ‘It’s Qui Feng. She’s video-calling.’

They all gather around as the video feed takes a while to connect, He Tian leaning down to prop his chin on Guan Shan’s shoulder with the phone held out in front of them, and then Qui Feng’s bubblegum hair fills the screen.

‘Oh, good, you’re all together,’ she says, her neon green lipstick only momentarily distracting. ‘This will make things easier.’

‘Hello to you too,’ He Tian says dryly.

The wave of her hand is dismissive. ‘Too busy for pleasantries right now,’ she says. ‘Do you want the good news or bad news?’

‘Bad news,’ they say in unison—with the exception of Jian Yi, whose face twists into a suffering pout.

Qui Feng leans back in her office chair. ‘I’ve done everything I can, but I can’t get you a show.’

Guan Shan’s breath catches, and disappointment blooms over them like a cloud sliding over the sun. In the small square of their four faces on the screen, Guan Shan sees He Tian frown. _‘Qui Feng—’_

‘I know,’ Qui Feng cuts in, holding up a hand, nails sharp as claws. ‘I said I’d try, but I didn’t say I’d make promises I couldn’t keep.’ She sniffs, tucks her hair behind her ear. ‘I’ve got to keep some kind of integrity, He Tian.’

His teeth grind together on Guan Shan’s shoulder, the angle of his jaw almost painful. ‘What’s the _good_ news then?’

She nods slowly. ‘I can’t get you your _own_ show,’ she says. ‘But I can get you in a competition that will give you one if you win. It’s in two weeks.’

They process what’s she telling them, and Jian Yi’s the first to speak: ‘Like—like a battle of the _bands_?’ he asks breathily. ‘Like in the movies?’

Qui Feng rolls her eyes. _‘Not_ like in the movies. These competitions are serious. They have a lot of backing from companies in the industry, and they’re huge opportunities for talented bands to get record labels and studio equipment and _proper_ representation. Showcase your best work, get through to the third round, and you might be in with a chance of sponsorship.’

‘Might?’ He Tian asks, with an edge.

Qui Feng’s lips tighten. ‘Rigging the competition is a surefire way of getting me fired, so don’t give me your _mights_ , He Tian.’

‘Your words, not mine.’

She glowers at him. Guan Shan tries to picture her with He Cheng, a small pink package of wrath and clipped consonants up against He Cheng’s unwavering passivity. What was it she’d seen in him? What was it she’d hoped she’d find?

‘Put out something good, and you’ll have this,’ Qui Feng says. ‘I’ll pull in a favour and get you your entry, and promote you in the competition. If the judges like anything, it’s bands who attract big audiences. Their paycheck comes out of the ticket sales.’

He Tian’s brow is arched. ‘What happened to no rigging?’

‘That’s not rigging,’ she retorts. ‘That’s knowing how to play the game.’

He Tian smiles like a secret, and Guan Shan’s mind lights up with understanding. They’re He Tian’s words on her tongue, and suddenly, she and He Cheng make perfect sense.

 

* * *

 

He Tian won’t squander what they’ve been given, but two weeks isn’t enough. They’ve played together less than a month, a handful of times, and two weeks isn’t _enough._

‘Why not?’ Jian Yi asks. He has one leg tucked underneath him, the four of them cramped around a table at one of the downtown bars on a Wednesday night, a day of practice leaving them with calloused fingers and hoarse voices and stress levels that are dwindling as the bottles steadily clutter up the table. The heavy bass in the bar makes them wince, and He Tian’s trying to remember whose stupid fucking idea it was to come here.

‘We’ve got two songs under our belt that are nearly perfect,’ Jian Yi’s saying. ‘We’ve got a week and a half to get another one and we’re good to go.’

‘Nearly perfect,’ He Tian echoes, looking down into his murky cup of _shaojiu_. ‘That’s comforting.’

Jian Yi points the neck of his beer bottle in He Tian’s direction. ‘Think of it this way. When people train for marathons, they never run the full distance, right? They don’t wanna spoil themselves for the big day. Adrenaline carries them the rest of the way, and that’s what’s gonna happen with us.’

Zhengxi nudges Jian Yi’s shoulder. ‘Thank god you’re the fucking optimist among us,’ he says. His fondness is thick, and his cheeks are flushing.

Jian Yi flicks his nose, Zhengxi batting his hand away with a glower that stops just short of convincing.

 _Are you fucking seeing this?_ he wants to ask Guan Shan, but the redhead is quiet and withdrawn at his side, drawing nonsense characters into the condensation pooling on the table. The day had been a long one, his lyrics warped and twisted and played over and over again until He Tian wasn’t sure they were anything but sound anymore, and the question he’d asked Guan Shan nights ago on his balcony plays back at him.

_You don’t give a shit about Jian Yi singing your thoughts and feelings to a crowd?_

It was going to get to him eventually—the realisation that his inner workings might be sung on the lips of a stranger who would sing them to their own tune, would give them their own meaning, would supplant and appropriate Guan Shan’s memories with their own.

‘I’m going for a smoke,’ He Tian announces. He taps Guan Shan on the shoulder. ‘Come with me.’

Guan Shan blinks at him, like it’s taking him a minute to displace thought with reality, and then he’s nodding and getting up from the table, He Tian’s hand on the dip of his waist an anchor, tactile moments snatched like floating dandelion seeds that He Tian is trying so carefully now not to crush in his palm. If he can save them, treat them gentle and kind, he might get a wish out of it.

They stop a few feet from the entrance once they’re outside, and He Tian lights up, Guan Shan’s eyes reflecting the cherry glow as he watches He Tian take his first inhale.

‘So. What’s biting you on the ass?’ He Tian asks. He blows the smoke behind him, but stays close, back to the street and the wintry chill that kicks him in the spine. Others have taken up the same idea, huddling in small groups while they suck on vapes and cigarettes, lit-up bar fronts crowded with people stretching the length of the street, wiping out the chance to see the midnight flare of stars.

‘Nothin’,’ Guan Shan says, shivering slightly in a grey henley shirt and ripped jeans. ‘This is just a lot. It’ll be shit if it doesn’t work.’

‘Yeah,’ says He Tian. He steps closer. ‘But what happened to not giving up easy?’

Guan Shan scratches his head, and shrugs. ‘It’s not my dream. Doesn’t apply to me.’

‘You sing like it is,’ He Tian says, tapping ash onto the pavement.

Guan Shan’s nose wrinkles. ‘I sing like I mean it. I don’t sing it ‘cause I want everyone else to hear. That’s Jian Yi’s thing.’

‘And what’s your thing?’

He Tian holds his gaze. Street lamps and car headlights are mirrored in the amber surface of Guan Shan’s eyes, and He Tian can see his own shadowed silhouette in his irises, a blocky shape of darkness with no detail. For some reason, that bothers him.

‘Still figurin’ that out,’ Guan Shan says.

He Tian ignores the heat in his chest on another drag, and grinds his cigarette out against the bar’s brick wall. They go back inside, where Zhengxi and Jian Yi are leaned into each other and talking whimsically. The bottles have been cleared, new ones replaced, plates of glazed meats and mixed rice, steam buns and bowls of spicy peanuts filling the empty space.

‘Can’t believe we’re really doing this,’ Zhengxi says, shaking his head. ‘We’re really fucking doing this. We could win. Our lives could change forever.’

‘We could be actual fucking legends,’ Jian Yi sighs happily, chewing on a piece of belly pork. He sweeps an open palm in front of them, fingertips sticky with sauce. ‘A global stage, penthouse apartments in every city, our voices on every radio. We’d be household names.’

Guan Shan settles down and sips at his beer. ‘How many other groups are thinking the same bullshit as us? Bands who’ve been playing since they were kids?’

‘What does it matter?’ Jian Yi retorts. ‘We grew up together. Maybe musically we’re a bit… inexperienced,’ he allows tentatively. ‘But we know each other. That’s gotta be something.’

‘Something,’ He Tian muses, watching Guan Shan eat in quick, sharp bites that are strangely delicate, a dog careful not to snap at its owner’s fingers. ‘We haven’t even got a band name. Qui Feng’s been harrassing my phone every fucking day for the promotions.’

‘Zhengxi and me’ve been thinking about that, actually,’ Jian Yi says. ‘Nothing seems good enough.’

‘ _Four Useless Fuckers_?’ Guan Shan suggests.

‘Three and a half,’ Zhengxi allows.

He Tian swallows a spoonful of rice. ‘Which one of us is the half?’

‘The one with the smallest dick,’ Guan Shan quips.

Zhengxi nods at him. ‘That’ll be you then.’

‘I’d beg to differ.’

After a pause, a small moment of understanding, they all look at He Tian.

Jian Yi speaks slowly. ‘Either you’re the one with the half, _or…’_ With all the gracefulness wrapped in the universe, Jian Yi expends it in arching one single brow to its highest effect. _‘You’ve_ seen Mo Guan Shan’s—’

_‘He fucking hasn’t.’_

He Tian smirks at Guan Shan’s outburst. Raises his bottle at him. ‘Sure about that?’

Jian Yi chortling, Guan Shan snatches the bottle from He Tian and takes a swig. When he slams it back on the table, his lips are sheened with the slick residue of beer, and He Tian watches that small pink tongue dart out and swipe it all away, hiding itself again as Guan Shan breaks eye contact out of self-consciousness.

Inwardly, He Tian sighs, feels a part of himself deflate.

Six years, he’s dealt with this. The ache.

How fucking terrible.

Time slips from them as they trade names back and forth to no effect; the beers come and go, plates empty and new orders made, wait staff swerving through groups of locals and businessmen and the odd tourist or two until they’re all at least halfway drunk. When Jian Yi has his eyes shut, twisted in his seat with his knees pressed against the side of Zhengxi’s thigh and his forehead on Zhengxi’s shoulder, He Tian leans to the side.

‘Come to my house next week,’ he murmurs in Guan Shan’s ear. ‘The night before the show.’

Guan Shan darts a glance at him. ‘Your apartment?’

‘My house. My dad wants a family dinner. I’ve asked if I can bring a guest.’

Guan Shan stills, and maybe it’s the cushion of alcohol, but his thoughts are laid out so clearly on his face: he’s pictured a moment like that a thousand times a thousand different ways. Smashed bottles and broken china and shame on He Tian’s face—the final, resounding realisation that Guan Shan belongs nowhere near someone like him. And it’s terrifying.

‘Why the fuck are you asking me?’

‘Because I want you there,’ He Tian says honestly. ‘He Cheng’s bringing someone and—’

‘Oh, _great_ ,’ Guan Shan drawls. ‘That’s fucking _great_. One more He I can fuck myself over in front of.’

‘Shut up, it’ll be fine,’ He Tian says. But Guan Shan’s words flash an image in his mind that he’s struggling not to indulge in right now. ‘You just need a suit,’ he manages.

Guan Shan’s face pinches together. ‘Because my line of work involves wearing so much _formal wear._ ’

‘You know,’ He Tian replies quietly, knowing their faces are dangerously close, knowing that the mood is singular to the act of leaning in, sharing secrets with sweet-salt breath and dim lighting and cold air and so many people around them who could be watching but aren’t. ‘You haven’t said _no_.’

‘You should ask Zhengxi,’ Guan Shan says stiffly, and his glance darts across the table. ‘He’s better at controlling himself.’

He Tian’s head tilts. ‘The fuck would I ask Zhan Zhengxi for? I’m asking _you_. I want my family to know who you are. To me.’

Guan Shan studies his face, searching, and He Tian lets him. He’s failing already, but he tries to keep himself open, tries to keep welded gates unlocked so Guan Shan can wander through unstopped, and find what he needs to if it means he’ll say yes.

Over the sound of music and laughter growing steadily rowdier, Guan Shan’s exhale is unsteady. He asks, ‘What the fuck am I to you?’

The question should knock He Tian sideways, laden with subtext and something unempirical that requires accessing hearts weighed down with locks and chains. But all He Tian can hear is the transparency of Guan Shan’s scratchy vocal chords when he sings, an emotional freight train that knocks him of the breath he struggles to recover before Guan Shan can look over at him as he finishes up a song.

The vibration of sound waves hits He Tian under his skull and scratches at the meat of his brain, goes deeper behind his second and third rib, and jolts his arteries like they’re the guitar strings strummed impatiently, chaotically, under Guan Shan’s fingers. The lyrics always punch him like a scream, a shaking plea for recognition, Guan Shan’s singing like the structural implosion of the universe He Tian has built around himself, conversational rules obliterated, everything sacred and untapped laid waste between them, not just accessing it all with a key but fucking _decimating it._

How does he make sound _sound_ like that? How does he put the brutal sentiment into lyrics the way He Tian’s never heard him make with words?

 _When did you write this?_ had been the best answer He Tian could come up with to Guan Shan’s _stay, please stay,_ and it’s a shameful mess of fucking nothingness, wet and limp in his hand, and shame oozes into him, that for all his posturing this is all he can offer in return.

For now, He Tian says, ‘Still figuring that out,’ which would be funny—hilarious, even—if they both didn’t know it was a lie.

 

* * *

 

It’s a three-hour drive to He Tian’s family home, skyscrapers and urban neighbourhoods sliding away through the tinted windows with the rest of the daylight. He Tian’s quiet in a way that’s unsettling—not watchful, or teasing, but _quiet_ —and Guan Shan wonders if it has something to do with the guy driving the car _._ Guan Shan hasn’t been able to get a good look at him, only has the glimpse of a spiked tail climbing up the back of his neck as anything to go by. Which, really, given the calibre and aesthetic of He Tian’s social circles, isn’t much.

‘You scrub up well,’ He Tian’d said, waiting outside the door to Guan Shan’s apartment, shouldering Guan Shan’s overnight bag.

‘You picked the suit,’ Guan Shan retorted, snapping together his cufflinks. He didn’t return the compliment, but it was deserved. The light grey of He Tian’s shirt lightened the black of his eyes by a shade or two until they shifted from midnight to twilight, time brought backwards so their days were longer and shadows shorter, and Guan Shan had time to look at him and not return the compliment.

He Tian leaned in the doorway, the stretch of his torso and his smile all louche, and said, ‘A suit doesn’t wear itself.’

That skips through Guan Shan’s mind now, skull on the headrest, eyes trained on the blurring landscape that’s fading from grey to green. There’d been little trace of He Tian’s usual leering, though he’d made no attempt to hide his open appreciation, and in its place there had been a soft crinkle at the corners of He Tian’s eyes, something gently moulded and malleable about his mouth that would’ve made it easy for Guan Shan to pull on the shouldered strap of his bag and tug He Tian in and—

‘When was the last time you saw your dad?’ Guan Shan asks in the car.

Fists on his knees, He Tian’s knuckles tighten to white skin, then relax. ‘A while ago,’ he says, letting his face turn to Guan Shan’s. ‘He’s always busy doing shit, and He Cheng doesn’t hand out holidays much.’

Guan Shan digests this. ‘You think you’ll work for him forever?’

 _‘Fuck_ no,’ He Tian says vehemently. He glances at the back of the driver’s head, whose eyes don’t shift from the road, and drops his voice. ‘We’ll kill each other soon enough.’ Too much honesty rings in his voice, and when Guan Shan’s eyes widen, He Tian softens his expression with a wry smile. ‘I’m banking a lot on this band.’

‘I don’t get why. You could get any job you fucking _wanted_. It’s easy for you. Why put money and energy into something that might not work?’

‘Is it easy?’ He Tian says. He runs his fingers over the fabric of his suit jacket folded over his lap. ‘If I’m in the public eye, that brings the business into the public too. So either they make me quit the band, or they quit me.’

‘What makes you so sure they won’t make you quit the band?’

He Tian says simply, ‘Nothing. Cheng’s been riding my ass about it since we started playing together. I couldn’t keep it a secret from him forever, and he’s been giving me more work every run, sending me further away. Half-sure I won’t come back one day.’ He shrugs. ‘One of us is gonna win, and he’s fucking deluded if he thinks it’s gonna be him.’

‘Your dad… doesn’t know.’

‘Correct.’

Guan Shan stares at him. ‘You’re gonna tell him tonight.’

He Tian smiles, all teeth. ‘It’s going to be a fun evening.’

Guan Shan sucks air through his teeth and smacks his head back into the headrest. Of course there’s a reason more than just _wanting Guan Shan there_. Of course anything involving He Tian and his family is going to end up in a bloodbath with Guan Shan trying to avoid swiping knifes and keeping his arteries intact. Guan Shan doesn’t need some fancy family dinner to have proof of the He’s crooked dysfunctionality.

‘Here,’ says He Tian, holding out the left bud of his earphones that he unwinds around a clunky-looking iPod. ‘Listen with me?’

Guan Shan grumbles, but takes the earpod and shoves it in his ear.

Pleased, He Tian hits play.

The drive passes with a deluge of Queen and The Who’s protest-pop and Eric Clapton’s bluesy vocals. The Chinese bands Demerit, Carsick Cars, and Torturing Noise are cacophonous through the earphones, biting and incisive, and Guan Shan’s heart hinges on Placebo’s nasal tones of _you’ve never seen the lonely me at all._ Newer covers have slipped into He Tian’s library, like the MCR rendition of Bob Dylan that Guan Shan makes a note to look up later, and he blinks through violent rap tracks and closes his eyes to He Tian’s usual selection of short, whimsy lo-fi pieces.

They’re forty minutes away when Guan Shan raises an eyebrow. ‘Is this Paramore?’ he asks.

He Tian shrugs. His eyes are closed. ‘I loved this angsty shit growing up. She’s only seventeen in this track.’

Guan Shan listens, feels himself tense with every lyric, and he’s struggling to even his breath on the outro, repeating the implanted memory he never had access to: He Tian, pushing through his teens, blasting through the speakers of his solitary apartment for one that _this heart, it beats, beats for only you. My heart is yours._

And then the song skips, and it takes longer than it should for Guan Shan to recognise the guitar riffs and the song rhythm. He thinks, first, _this sounds angry._ And then, _this sounds like it’ll hurt_. And then there are clear words and Guan Shan distantly recognises his own scratchy vocal chords and _I know you’re gonna be like him_ —

Guan Shan yanks his earpod out. ‘This is shit,’ he mutters, folding his arms, the wire limp across his lap.

They’d recorded their samples the day before, and Guan Shan stood to the side while Zhengxi, He Tian and Jian Yi leaned over a laptop and played with the sound. Hearing his own voice was like staring at himself in a too-detailed mirror, every imperfection brought to his immediate attention, pores and scars and the ugly downward slope of his mouth so fucking obvious that he knew everyone else was seeing them too. Guan Shan doesn’t want that with this; he doesn’t want to know how he _sounds_.

He Tian looks at him. ‘It’s you. It’s us. We’ve got to perform this next week.’

‘Yeah, and I sound like shit.’

‘Fuck off, we sound good,’ He Tian objects. When Guan Shan’s response is taciturn silence and scorn, He Tian scoffs. ‘Christ, you’re so fucking stubborn. Is there _anything_ you like about yourself?’

That gets him in the gut, and Guan Shan grits his teeth. ‘You gonna throw money at me to change my mind?’

He Tian rears back. ‘What?’

The engine cuts out.

‘We’re here, sir.’

He Tian draws his eyes away from Guan Shan’s, and he nods at the driver. Their car doors are opened for them, and they have no choice but to climb out.

Guan Shan’s clouded thoughts shatter as he takes stock of his surroundings: the high walls, sweeping roofs, lamplit passages through the courtyard, a stream layered with water lilies and lotus flowers, moonlight bearing down on it, luminous and full. He Tian’s family home is a _siheyuan_ complex that must be a few hundred years old, and Guan Shan feels so small.

He Tian’s face, when he looks at it, is unreadable.

 _He grew up here_ , Guan Shan thinks, led through a labyrinthine complex by staff on the estate. He Tian buttons up his jacket while he walks ahead with the resigned familiarity of someone who doesn’t want to know his way through the verandas and wooden passages and hallowed, ceremonial halls with high ceilings.

Guan Shan thinks of his own cramped apartment back when his dad was around, how he and Guan Shan’s mom would laugh and stumble on apologies as they caught shoulders and hips on counter corners and each other.

‘This explains so fucking much,’ Guan Shan murmurs.

He Tian glances back. ‘You haven’t seen anything yet.’

It feels good to stretch his legs and move, but a kind of anticipating dread fills Guan Shan’s belly, like watching a horror film and not being able to look away.

They walk into another hall, the estate like a palace and nothing like a home, and a varnished cherry wood table stretches the length of the room, layered with steaming bowls of soup and bowls of rice, rich glazed meat and platters of bright pickled vegetables and steamed fish.

At its head sits the man that must be He Tian’s father, dressed in a red suit that fits the lacquered wood edging the room, and it’s like existing in another reality, where He Tian is older and harder and lined, greying hair drawn back from his face, and any smile that might stretch across his thin lips would be absent of the wry mirth He Tian likes to indulge in so much.

‘Welcome, son,’ Mr He says. He doesn’t get up, and He Tian welcomes himself in, Guan Shan hesitating as he follows him. Without preamble, He Tian sits opposite his brother, and Guan Shan does a double-take as he sees Qui Feng sitting beside him, her smile tight and reluctant.

Guan Shan stands behind his chair, carved and high-backed and punishingly hard under his hands. ‘Uncle,’ he starts hesitantly. ‘Thank you for having me in your home.’

Mr He lifts his eyes to his, and it’s so fucking familiar that Guan Shan wants to choke on the way they look at him so exactly, terrifyingly alike.

‘Yes. I’ve heard so much about you.’ Guan Shan catches He Tian stiffen, and knows that whoever had been waxing lyrical about him—it had never been He Tian. Mr He gestures towards the table. ‘Please, sit. Eat. You’ve had a long drive from Shanghai.’

Guan Shan sits. Servants descend on the table from the edges of the room, and as his plates and bowls are filled, Guan Shan realises he’s never felt so fucking uncomfortable in his life. Is he the girl brought home to meet the family? Some spectacle to be watched over the course of a meal so Mr He can make out his character? Judge his suitability?

The conversation is bland, almost scripted while they eat. Mr He asks Guan Shan about his work, his hobbies, his family. Their voices echo in the hall. Guan Shan skips over the details of his father, and He Tian reaches under the table to stroke a thumb over the back of his fisted hand. Guan Shan doesn’t pull away, and Mr He doesn’t dig it from him, but Guan Shan knows he’s marked the hesitancy, and will file it away for another day. Probably, he knows every single sordid detail of Guan Shan’s history, can see every single scar and welt and bloodied gouge that Guan Shan has earnt over the years, staining him like powdered paint. He Tian’s even stroke confirms it, and says, _Bear it a little longer._

He Tian’s father reaches for a bottle of wine, and Guan Shan takes the opportunity of movement to lean into He Tian’s ear. ‘Where’s your mom?’ he asks quietly.

‘He Tian’s mother doesn’t live here.’

Guan Shan jerks back in his seat. ‘Sorry, Mr He,’ he mutters. ‘I didn’t realise.’

‘Not to worry,’ Mr He says, smiling over a spoonful of broth. ‘I don’t imagine He Tian tells you much about anyone but himself.’

‘Gotta look out for number one, right, old man?’ He Tian counters. His voice is cheery and sharp as a knife. ‘You taught me that.’

‘He Tian,’ He Cheng warns, the first thing he’s said all evening. Sitting across from him at a dinner table is an arresting experience; in his suit, he’s a different person. ‘Don’t fucking start.’

‘It started the second I walked through the door, Brother,’ He Tian says. He tilts his head. ‘What, did you think this was gonna be some idyllic family meal where we all smile and say our thank you’s and act like we’re interested in each other’s lives?’ His chopsticks clatter to the table. ‘Oh wait, you all know everything about mine already. But that’s funny, because it’s not like you’ve ever had the decency to fucking _ask_.’

‘That’s enough,’ Mr He interrupts. ‘We have guests.’

He Tian’s eyes wander the room. ‘Oh right,’ he says. And then his gaze latches straight onto Qui Feng. ‘Me and Guan Shan, him and Qui Feng. I guess we’re all here to disappoint this evening.’

‘He Tian,’ Qui Feng hisses, eyes flashing. ‘Are you _seriously_ doing this right now?’

‘Quiet, girl,’ Mr He snaps.

‘She has a name, Father,’ He Cheng growls. His hands are in scarred fists on the table, and the food is growing cold. The servants are silent; Guan Shan wants to disappear into the back of his chair. He knows confrontation and spite and anger that is marrow-deep and raging like a knife in the heart. But none of this anger is his own; none of it matches up with the lyrics he’s scoured out of himself with scrounging fingers and ripped hoarsely through his own vocal chords.

This is anger of a different breed, and watching it play out like an old record is exhausting. Is this what Guan Shan sounds like all the time?

‘She does have a name,’ He Tian concurs with his brother. ‘It’s Qui Feng.’ He props his chin in his palm. ‘Did you know she represents music artists, Father? Bands?’

‘He Tian,’ He Cheng warns.

‘What, Brother?’ He Tian asks. ‘I’m not telling him anything he shouldn’t already know, right? Since you two are so fucking _communicative_ with each other?’

Mr He steeples his fingers. ‘Telling me what, He Cheng?’

‘Nothing, Father.’

It’s the wrong thing to say—too dismissive, too quick. He Cheng’s jaw clenches like he knows it, and his eyes land somewhere near the ceiling, bracing himself for what they all knew was coming.

‘You didn’t know Guan Shan and I were in a band?’ He Tian asks his father. ‘We have a competition next week.’

‘A band,’ his father echoes flatly. His finger runs around the edge of his wine glass. He takes a sip. ‘Quaint.’

He Tian leans back. His arm drapes around the back of Guan Shan’s chair, fingertips brushing the fine hair on his nape. His father’s eyes don’t leave He Tian’s, but Guan Shan knows he’s seen the gesture.

‘Qui Feng has been promoting us,’ He Tian tells him, conversational. ‘If we win, we might get signed. Start playing gigs. A radio session or two. Interviews.’

Mr He looks at his eldest son. ‘A band?’ he asks icily. ‘Did he stop working with you?’

‘I can’t stop what he does in his free time,’ He Cheng mutters, rubbing his temples.

‘You can’t stop him from bringing shame on our name? Was your education wasted on making you a _celebrity?’_

‘They’re talented kids, Mr He,’ Qui Feng protests. ‘You should be proud of them.’

He Tian’s father whips his glare towards her, biting and severe. ‘And this is exactly why you have no part in this family.’

‘Count your blessings, Qui Feng,’ He Tian tells her, getting to his feet, hand on Guan Shan’s shoulder. ‘You’d be fucking deluded if you did.’

 

* * *

 

They go upstairs in silence, and neither He Cheng nor his father stop them. He Tian’s bedroom is no different to the rest of the complex, antiquated and decked out in dark lacquered woods and red furnishings. Half-empty bookshelves line the walls, and a carved chest sits at the end of a four-poster bed. It’s not a child’s room, and there’s no trace of whoever He Tian was before Guan Shan knew him. It represents a house before any individual, and that’s clear to Guan Shan: He Tian isn’t meant to be an individual; he’s meant to be a He.

As soon as the door is closed behind them, He Tian throws his back against it and slumps. His face falls into the curve of his palms.

‘Fuck,’ he murmurs, muffled by skin.                             

Guan Shan holds himself against one of the bed posts. ‘That was the biggest fucking train wreck of a family dinner I’ve ever seen. That was TV drama levels of bullshit.’

‘Told you it would be fun.’ He Tian’s tone is bleak.

‘We have… _really_ fucking different ideas of fun,’ Guan Shan replies.

He Tian only shakes his head. His distress isn’t obnoxious and hyperbolic. Really, it’s pretty fucking understated. And that’s what makes it real. His moments of authenticity are only caught in the quiet, shallow gestures and small words. Guan Shan thinks of his body pressing his into the grass on the edge of a basketball court.

Guan Shan asks, ‘D’you wanna leave?’

‘We can’t. Not until tomorrow. It’s always the rule. One night once a year.’

‘That’s a shitty way of keeping up appearances.’

‘Everything about this place is shitty, Guan Shan.’ He Tian smiles, a thin, flat press of his lips. ‘Are things piecing together a bit more for you?’

‘Kinda,’ Guan Shan admits, and settles himself down on the bed. He’d wondered once—more than once, really—why He Tian was the way he was. What fucked-up set of circumstances has shaped him into this arrogant creature who knows how to get what he wants with consequential ignorance. What, despite it all, makes him lonely. ‘Family portraits are always a fucky version of the real thing.’

He Tian laughs dryly. He crosses the room in long, even strides, and sinks his weight down beside Guan Shan. They’re as close as they were in Guan Shan’s bedroom a few weeks ago, but the space here is too big, too open. It gives them too much opportunity to move away. There’s a quiet thrill in the fact that neither of them do.

‘Man, I fucking hated this place,’ He Tian sighs, running a hand over his bed sheets. ‘It was so quiet, you know?’

Guan Shan doesn’t. With the restaurant and his mom’s singing and his dad’s loud laughter and the radio and TV and people coming and going in a stream of familiar faces, Guan Shan never knew quiet. And then his dad left, and he had to make his own kind of noise.

‘People were always here for my father,’ He Tian tells him, ‘and I had to sit in here or the gardens with a guard. Couldn’t fucking wait to get my own place. He only let me move ‘cause he thought my uncle would be there most of the time.’

‘Poor little rich boy,’ Guan Shan remarks, but he feels the swift stab of regret that follows. He doesn’t know what it was like for He Tian—he only recognises the privilege of it all. Can he criticise if he can’t empathise? If he only knows his own struggle and his own tormented childhood?

‘What d’you think would happen?’ Guan Shan asks, feeling strangely nostalgic. Questions crowd in his head. Is it notalgia if the past he’s remembering never happened? ‘If the two of us swapped places when we were kids?’

He Tian thinks about it, rubs fingers along his jaw. ‘I think you’d be like me and I’d be like you. You’re angry because of your father. I’m a cunt because of mine. Sometimes I’m not sure we’re made up of much of anything else.’

‘Maybe,’ Guan Shan murmurs. He leans back, feet planted on the floor, a hand folded over his stomach, another trailing lazily in the bedsheets between them, looking up at the canopy of He Tian’s four-poster. ‘What the fuck was Qui Feng doing with your brother?’

He Tian squints, trying to find an answer in the wood panels of his bedroom door. ‘I don’t know,’ he admits. ‘She shouldn’t be. He’s shit for her.’

‘And you said we were the disappointing ones.’

He Tian looks down at him. ‘You know I didn’t mean that. I say shit when I’m around them that I can’t help. It’s like… I know what I’m like sometimes. I’ve started to see myself in the way you look at me. But around them I just—I completely lose it. Because they _don’t_ know what they’re like. They don’t care who they hurt. It’s insane.’

Processing the monologue takes Guan Shan a moment of reorientation, and when it’s over, he feels just as lost. _You need this fucking band as much as Jian Yi,_ he thinks, bewildered, gazing up at him. He feels the ghosting touch of He Tian’s fingers on his nape, that stake to claim in front of his father. _Maybe even more._

‘What?’ He Tian asks quietly, looking down at him. ‘You have this look on your face like…’

Guan Shan swallows.

When he pulls He Tian down, he’s malleable, perfectly soft, and his lips are the most pleasantly warm thing Guan Shan has ever felt against his own. It’s nothing like the burn on the edge of a sun-sweltering basketball court. This has been in the waiting. This has been in every lyric and trembling guitar strum asking the question of _when, how long, is it soon?_

He Tian’s fingers scramble to untuck Guan Shan’s shirt, to find the warmth of his fluttering stomach, waiting for his hands underneath the fabric. With a shift that doesn’t let their mouths part from each other, lungs dragging in breath with a clash of teeth and desperate swipe of tongues, Guan Shan has He Tian on his back with his torso bared and clothing pooled in a creasing mess somewhere that’s vaguely behind them.

 _Now_ , is their mutual answer.

A lyric plays in Guan Shan’s head, quintessential as He Tian mouths at his neck and brings him close, draws a knee up between his thighs, presses up until Guan Shan moans:

_I know you think that love is the way you make it  
So I don't want to be there when you decide to break it_

‘I want this,’ he says, trying to forget the tune to make space for their own, his words breathy and hot. ‘Fuck, I _want_ you.’

‘Six fucking years to be sure, Mo Guan Shan,’ He Tian tells him, disgarding any remaining clothing—and then stopping.

Guan Shan looks at him, questioning. They’re naked, sitting across from each other. He Tian has his hands on Guan Shan’s waist, and Guan Shan has a palm on He Tian’s thigh, and heat is pooling in his belly. His skin has turned red, freckles lost in the flush, and He Tian is everything Guan Shan knew he would be: muscle jagged with scars, all broad shoulders and a thick waist and thighs that are bunched iron beneath the flat of Guan Shan’s palm.

He Tian looks back and sees all of him.

They spend a night seeing all of each other.

There’s spit and cum and self-inflicted wounds that get blood on He Tian’s sheets and blood on Guan Shan’s skin, mingling with sweat like watercolour. He Tian croons like he’s singing a lullaby and Guan Shan gasps out, strangled and breathy like the break between refrains, notes held high and twisting above them like two branches of a vine seeking each other and pressing harder and tighter until they bloom. There’s nothing discordant, nothing that isn’t harmonious and plangent and nothing that doesn’t make tears leak helplessly from the corners of Guan Shan’s eyes while He Tian arches his body slick over his, torso melding to the ridges of Guan Shan’s spine, stroking away his pleas and smothering his cries into a pillow, wet with spit.

They hold onto each other through the shuddering, a moment’s delay between them, chasing the high while their fingertips claw for purchase on glistening skin, trembling like the tectonic plates inside of them are both shifting, both changing course to fit to each other’s, an earthquake for themselves—until their broken shards meld together and are confirmed with the spent, settled ache that ebbs over them.

They’re both hollowed out and full by the time they hear footsteps wandering past the door and along the corridor, and while He Tian throws the condom off, wiping cum into the shadows of Guan Shan’s ribs, Guan Shan laughs weakly into the dip of He Tian’s shoulder, gleaming with sweat, and entertaining the thought of _again._

But He Tian only tugs him in, curling himself instead to Guan Shan’s back until his breath slows hotly on Guan Shan’s neck.

‘Shower,’ Guan Shan murmurs, shifting. ‘We’re gross.’

‘Tomorrow,’ He Tian sighs, the lock around Guan Shan unyielding.

It doesn’t take much convincing; He Tian’s breathing is sated and sleep-soft in minutes, and Guan Shan can’t put up the fight to move him. There’s not much in him for once, limbless and absent, that wants to put up a fight.

 

* * *

 

He shakes He Tian, sleeping soundly and deeply beside him, sheet lines on his face, and He Tian stirs.

When Guan Shan woke, the first thing he’d thought was, _Damage control._ At best, slip from the sheets, pack his bag, trek for a taxi a mile down into bumblefuck nowhere. At worst, ignore He Tian’s searching hands and searching eyes and deny the truth of anything they’d started the night before between their bodies. But he thinks about the release, how he doesn’t feel regret like bitterness on his tongue, how he wants He Tian to wake so he can see if it feels different to be looked at by him now.

Awake, he still wants.

‘Hey, fucker,’ Guan Shan says quietly, warming as He Tian’s lips curve upwards, eyes taking their time to work open. ‘It’s nearly noon. We should get ready. Jian Yi’s called three times already.’

He Tian groans appropriately, and Guan Shan finds himself pinned against hot skin that stretches across him _everywhere_.

‘Five more minutes.’

Guan Shan scowls. After a sigh—consents.

Five minutes takes twenty; their mutual shower takes thirty, and Guan Shan flares at He Tian’s smug glances as they dress. Guan Shan’d seen the dark marks on his skin through the steamed mirror, ignorant patches of broken flesh that don’t seem to care where they’ve been placed, and his thighs tremble slightly as he buttons up his jeans like running sprints without a warm-up.

They slip through the house once they’re dressed. It’s quiet and cool around the grounds of the estate, grass dewy from the night’s frost. Overalled men and women tending to the gardens pause as they pass, and He Tian’s father and brother are nowhere to be seen. Guan Shan catches He Tian’s wary glances, notes the loosening of his shoulders as they reach the entrance to the estate. It feels like they’ve escaped.

The black sedan that picked them up yesterday is waiting on the drive, exhaust pipe billowing smoke around the entrance gate, and the driver puts their bags in the car while they slide into the back seats with unspoken relief.

‘I thought you two had a change of heart.’

They both jump as Qui Feng speaks from the front seat. She has the visor down, and uses the mirror to paint her lips blue; it lets her meet their eyes.

‘I’ve been waiting an _hour_ ,’ she tells them.

‘The fuck are you doing here?’ Guan Shan blurts, while He Tian is still mustering up a response. He knows how well He Tian likes being surprised—and it’s not at fucking all. He knows, too, how they spent that last hour, and the realisation curls up his spine like the slow unfurling of a flower under sunlight.

Qui Feng’s responding look is steely. ‘Hitching a ride with you back to Shanghai,’ she says, twisting in her seat. ‘Is that a problem?’

‘Trouble in paradise?’ He Tian remarks. ‘It was fast this time.’

She scowls. ‘Cheng had to go to Tokyo this morning.’

There’s a beat of silence, a hitch of confusion that Guan Shan feels keenly. If He Cheng had work, wouldn’t He Tian have known about it? Wouldn’t he have been towed along with him? It would have been opportune: tonight’s show month’s long in the planning, and everything shattered by He Tian’s non-presence, courtesy of his brother.

‘He has his priorities in order,’ is all He Tian says, muttered and laced with bitterness.

The driver shuts his door and starts the engine, and Qui Feng points a finger at He Tian from the front seat. ‘You can bitch about priorities to me after you win tonight’s competition.’

It’s as rousing as it is threatening, and He Tian only smiles thinly and says, ‘Watch us.’

 

* * *

 

‘Why do I have such bad ideas?’

‘Honestly?’ Zhengxi says to Jian Yi’s moaning. ‘This is one of your better ones.’

They’re backstage at the competition. Zhengxi is perched on an upturned crate with his hands laced between his knees, eyes following Jian Yi’s panicked back-and-forth pacing that makes him move like a jerky wind-up doll. Stagehands and managers and technicians are dressed in black and running between bands, kitting them up with mics and providing towels and bottles of water.

They find them huddled in small clusters, claiming a piece of wall to perch against or a vacant chair to gather around like mould growing in damp, dark corners of the backstage theatre, a run-down structure from the 1930’s that clings to accents of burnished gold and tinges of glorious revolution, and now smells of sweat and must and shakes with electric.

The chaos is organised, pumping the first drips of adrenaline through Guan Shan’s body; he’s sweating in his white tank, and the flashing touches He Tian presses to the back of his neck do nothing to cool him down. They’d abandoned their jackets in the cloakroom, cold evening air rushed away by the heat of sweating, nervous bodies and strobing lights, and the entry sticker on his bicep is starting to peel away.

They’re due on in two more sets; Guan Shan has been trying not to listen to the other bands, tries instead to recall the lyrics of their third piece, their relatively unpracticed piece—their eponymous one. He chides himself for his own arrogance, the surety that says they’ll get through far enough to perform it, but it’s a distraction from his feverish shivering that reminds him he wrote their first two pieces and the foundations of their success hinges on _him_.

‘Better ones?’ Jian Yi asks. ‘How is this better? I’m gonna forget the lyrics. I’m gonna go blank.’

‘C’mere,’ Zhengxi murmurs, and Jian Yi obliges. He puts his hands on Zhengxi’s shoulders, and Zhengxi puts his on Jian Yi’s waist. ‘We’ve got this,’ he tells him. ‘You’ve got a fucking incredible voice. You’re singing great fucking lyrics. With great fucking musicians backing you up. When have we failed you?’

Jian Yi pouts. ‘Zhengxi…’ he starts, sounding mopish.

‘I’m gonna throw up,’ Guan Shan mutters.

He Tian huffs in his ear. His hands haven’t left Guan Shan’s skin; he’s plucking at his wrist, snaking an arm around his waist, an elbow on his shoulder, lips kissing sweat away at his nape. Each touch is a small torch flaring through him from the inside, teasing Guan Shan between wanting to push He Tian away and pull him in.

‘Not jealous are we?’ He Tian murmurs, the bass of his chest heavy as he makes his voice heard over the music on stage.

‘Fuck off,’ Guan Shan throws back, but he leans into him anyway, lets his ass rest between He Tian’s hips, torso shirtless and damp with sweat, leather pants riding low. _At least there’s this afterwards,_ Guan Shan thinks, and it’s enough to frighten him. Between getting back to Shanghai and meeting up with Jian Yi and Zhengxi for Qui Feng’s pep talk, they’ve barely shared a breath between their two mouths.

Where does he get off on thinking there’s a round two? Where did he start to think he was worthy of something more than He Tian’s sole attention for a night torn apart by his family, where Guan Shan was only cleaning up the aftermath?

He shakes his head. Beyond the stage, there’s the roar of a crowd cheering, the set closing, and a flurry of movement as the current band move off, and the next in line gets ushered on with swift efficiency.

‘We’re next,’ He Tian says to no one in particular, and Jian Yi looks ready to faint.

Zhengxi’s thumb is brushing steady strokes into Jian Yi’s hip beneath his shirt, but Guan Shan isn’t watching that; he registers the strange look that comes over the band members as they walk off stage, sweaty with exhilaration and too much bass, eardrums bruised for a few hours, still soaking in the euphoria of having been young gods for a few scant minutes. Some of the groups are used to this: well-seasoned, they stand around chatting coolly before their slot, sharing a bottle of water and gum and cigarettes. Others are pale-faced and murmuring words fast under their breath, eyes closed and clutching at music sheets.

Guan Shan wonders, to an observer, which category they might fall into.

Qui Feng finds them a few minutes later, while the next band is working through a third repeat of the chorus, vocals strong if a little dull. She’s wearing a trench coat with the sleeves rolled up and ID cards swinging around her neck, and she gives them a rare smile that makes her eyes crinkle, checking their earpieces and the stickered tattoos on their arms. She relieves Zhengxi of his shirt, loosens Jian Yi’s hair from its ponytail, and tuts at the newly acquired marks that cover every inch of Guan Shan’s and He Tian’s bare skin.

‘Are we to your liking?’ He Tian teases, sucking from his last cigarette.

‘You’ll have to do,’ she says begrudgingly, but there’s an odd spark of fondness, a reluctant tilt at the corner of her mouth that seeps out warmly.

Guan Shan is struck with the sudden fear of disappointing her.

‘Just you and me now, babe,’ He Tian whispers in Guan Shan’s ear as the cheering rips to the backstage again, amps wavering with the final chords of the band’s song. ‘You and me are the only ones that matter.’

Guan Shan looks up at him, gaze flitting from arrogant mouth to coal eyes to the chest he’d spent the night pressed up against. He wets his lips. ‘Even if we get kicked out in the first round?’

He Tian leans into him, smoke leaking from his mouth. ‘Didn’t wait six years to only have a first round.’

It isn’t quite a promise; it isn’t quite _anything_ , but it’ll have to do. There are staff gathering them to the side entrance, giving them a quick once-over and a sound check, Qui Feng mouthing a good luck, and then He Tian’s palm is pushing in the centre of Guan Shan’s back, and his feet send splintering shocks through his calves as he walks onto the stage.

Lights flare at them, eyes squinting to make out the crowd, already hyped and ready for the next bone-aching reverberation of the bass, the screaming peal of an electric guitar, a heavy breath shuddered into the mic, and as He Tian smiles into their impatient gazes, they give them just that.

  

* * *

 

They make it to the third round.

Jian Yi spends the break between the second and third bouncing on the balls of his feet, still berating himself for the slip in the harmony of the second round, but even Guan Shan can admit there’s a tight fist in the centre of his belly that makes him breathless, makes the hiccuping thought of _we might do this_ skip through him with naive eagerness.

‘The judges love your energy,’ Qui Feng tells them, minutes before their final set. ‘You’re all such different personalities clashing together and it _works_.’ She winks at Guan Shan before she parts and says, ‘The lyrics aren’t bad, either, Mo Guan Shan.’

He Tian nudges him in the side. ‘Told you.’

Guan Shan glances at him. He’s as sweaty as the rest of them now, black strands clinging to his forehead that he has a habit of swiping, ineffectually, back. But Guan Shan is seeing the shimmering echo of a schoolboy glow; that fifteen-year-old kid grinning through middle school halls and jumping over walls and laughing over Guan Shan prone in a hospital bed, life briskly saved.

‘I want a party after this,’ Jian Yi says. ‘I want to get trashed and hire out a hotel room and _trash_ it.’

‘Calm down, Jagger,’ Zhengxi says, rolling his eyes. ‘Who’s gonna foot the bill after?’

He Tian snorts, ringed hands held up. ‘Don’t look at me. We’ve got a reputation to _make_ , not ruin.’

‘Ew,’ Guan Shan mutters, nudging him back. ‘Since when were you the fucking responsible one?’

He Tian’s eyes glitter, and he runs his hand through Guan Shan’s hair in a quick, pulling swipe. The sting is brief, and Guan Shan feels it light up his synapses like the flash of white on an MRI.

‘I know how to take care of things,’ He Tian says.

 _Things?_ Guan Shan’s questioning look says. _What does that include?_

Jian Yi raises both eyebrows. ‘Like how to order takeout.’

‘Or call Guan Shan,’ Zhengxi corrects.

‘Fuck you, I _can_ cook,’ He Tian protests, folding his arms.

Zhengxi waves a hand in his direction. _‘Yeah_ ,’ he says pointedly. ‘Because of _Guan Shan._ ’

Guan Shan coughs. ‘He’s not a totally useless fuck sometimes,’ he tells them, offering a delayed back-up, and He Tian scoffs at the weak attempt.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ Jian Yi says with an admirably large, shit-eating grin. He leans over and jabs at one of the hickies on Guan Shan’s neck. ‘We see that well enough for ourselves.’

A small scuffle ensues. It leaves Jian Yi choking out laughter and Zhengxi with the bridge of his nose squeezed between forefinger and thumb, and Guan Shan drags He Tian’s lunging body back until it’s settled firmly and properly at his side, and He Tian’s mouth is secured firmly and properly against his own. The kiss is a thief’s midnight steal, quick and clean and a little dirty, and spit strings between their lips with their parting.

‘Take care of yourself first, you ass,’ Guan Shan tells He Tian, wiping his mouth in his arm, only slightly breathless, flipping a middle finger in Jian Yi’s whooping direction.

He Tian is halfway to grinning at the chiding, but Guan Shan watches as the smile falters, and his eyes fall somewhere beyond.

Light fades, grey shifting out the colour, and there’s only music-turned-noise and the sweltering heat of backstage and, rendered unseen, a briefly despairing feeling of _loneliness_ weighs Guan Shan down. He’s turned momentarily invisible, a prisoner before a detective in an interrogation room, a mirrored wall shuttered up between them. Guan Shan stares at his reflection emptily.

‘He Tian?’ he asks quietly, probing, chewing on the inside of his cheek until the flesh tastes like pennies. He hears his heart echoing in his body.

A beat passes, colour resumes, the wall lifted. He Tian shakes his head. Guan Shan breathes out through his nose.

‘I thought—There was a guy that looked like my brother. It’s nothing.’ He Tian rubs sweat from his eyebrow with his knuckles. ‘The lights are fucking with my vision.’

Unease sits on the back of Guan Shan’s neck. ‘Qui Feng said he was in Tokyo.’

‘Right,’ He Tian says. He swings an arm around Guan Shan’s shoulders, tugging him flush against his side. Again, he says, ‘It’s nothing.’

Movement pulls their attention away; a stagehand is beelining towards them, and Jian Yi is hoisting Zhengxi to his feet with hand clasped to forearm, a palm on his shoulder to steady him when Zhengxi stumbles. Out the corner of his eye, Guan Shan sees the beacon of Qui Feng’s bubblegum hair as she pushes her small frame through roaming musicians and bustling staff, and Jian Yi bumps fists with the lead vocalist walking past them off the stage.

‘Third time lucky?’ Jian Yi asks the three of them hopefully, rubbing his palms together.

Zhengxi flicks him on the ear. ‘Let’s just not fuck up, yeah?’

‘Guys, wait,’ says Guan Shan, as they’re led towards the entrance to stage right. ‘Qui Feng’s—’

‘You’re up, boys,’ the stagehand cuts in. ‘No time like the present.’

Guan Shan glances back one more time, sees a flash of pink, then a body blocking Qui Feng’s way, and then the stage is greeting them for the third time: light and heat and the heady stench of sharp sweat and spilled beer and adrenaline coating the stage like resin.

They resume their positions with an almost-confidence that’s also tinged with defeatism. If this isn’t everything they have, there’s going to be nothing left to give.

Guan Shan adjusts the strap of his guitar and wonders if this is fluke, if this is Qui Feng’s doing, if they’re really in with a shot. It seems impossible, standing sweaty and filthy before a theatre-full of people, the judges peering down from the upper tiers, but Jian Yi presses his lips to the mic, and Guan Shan doesn’t have time to weigh up probabilities.

‘This is our final song,’ Jian Yi says. He’s not buoyant or nervous or childish when he’s on show. His smile is passive enough to be flirtatious, bright eyes shadowed by the lights and cloaking him with a sombre kind of gaze that wipes away the ingenue. Guan Shan remembers seeing this person in brief glimpses back in school, and the way Zhengxi watches Jian Yi from the drum kit is lazy and potent. ‘We hope it does the trick,’ Jian Yi tells the cheering crowd. ‘We’ve taken our name from these lyrics and they mean a lot to all of us. This is _Swimming in the Blood._ ’

He steps away for a second to embrace the applause, and there’s a wordless, collective agreement between the four of them that permits Zhengxi to lead the rhythm, chased up quickly by He Tian’s guitar.

It’s a maze of song that stops Guan Shan thinking about Qui Feng and He Cheng and, somehow, even He Tian beyond the realm of this stage. Instead, he works through shifting key changes and hitching tempos and he knows, realises with the strings hot beneath his fingers, that this song was so much about them.

Light swallows itself in a vacuum where Guan Shan realises that this isn’t about his father or He Tian or getting always left behind. This is about them and sex and blood and it digs its grubby, electric fingers under their skulls and makes them bear it with a shock that’s unrelenting.

Jian Yi cries out the first verse, and Guan Shan croons a scratchy harmony into the ether, and then it starts.

> _We’re all just thinkin’_  
>  _Not now, not soon_  
>  _But we’ll try for for the fuckin’ moon_  
>  _‘Cause there’s sharks in the water_  
>  _And they’re swimming right above our heads_  
>  _And we’ve got scars from the water_  
>  _And the late nights in our beds_
> 
> _And maybe there’s something to help us_  
>  _And maybe there’s somewhere to go_  
>  _Somethin’ that could keep this real_  
>  _‘Cause fuck we’ve never got this low_
> 
> _And we’re all just thinkin’_  
>  _Not now, not soon_  
>  _But we’ll get there and we’ll fucking prove_  
>  _That those sharks in the water_  
>  _They’re right above our heads_  
>  _They’ll keep coming with the flood_  
>  _As we’ll bite and we’ll grin_  
>  _We’ll make them fucking sing_
> 
> _And just keep swimming in the blood_  
>  _And just keep swimming in the blood_  
>  _And just keep swimming in the blood_

Jian Yi’s voice drops in the bridge, and Guan Shan experiences a moment where, just for a second, no time at all in front of the crowd, he’s outside his body looking in.

 _Does it get better than this?_ is what his Other Self is asking, watching them sweat and throw themselves into the sound, heads bowed and bodies moving. The moment is strangely contented while Jian Yi sings about the wreck they’ve made of themselves from which they’re still trying to heal, electric discordant with the rare token of peace in Guan Shan’s head that answers: _I don’t mind if it doesn’t._

They grin as He Tian’s refrain comes to its end, the crash of Zhengxi’s cymbals ringing out through the theatre, and Guan Shan understands the look he’d seen on the faces of the other bands: the euphoric hitch to their breathing, chests caving with a struggle for breath, and Guan Shan has never looked at He Tian before and felt so much _want_.

Silence doesn’t get a chance to fall: the crowd’s cheering lasts a whole minute, a sound like shaking, like the foundations of the theatre are tearing apart at the seams, stage lights swinging, and it’s a heady victory—until it isn’t.

Guan Shan’s ears are ringing and barely make out the shriek above the din, but they do, and the heat in the theatre tilts as a chill sweeps goosebumps along Guan Shan’s flesh. He recognises the tone of that scream, spent a childhood hearing his mother’s pleas on repeat in his head with nightly recurrence.

He knows so well that it’s born from fear.

Another scream rings out, and then a third, and Guan Shan sees hands pointing, palms covering mouths, stage lighting reflecting off the horror.

Guan Shan looks to He Tian first, a stunned disbelief wiping the adrenaline glow from his face, leaves him warped and distorted in a way that’s hollowing. A hand digs into Guan Shan’s stomach and pulls his throat up through his mouth, and when he looks, really _looks_ , he sees why.

The stage lights should be still, but it’s the rafter they’re attached to that swings, a hulk of linked metal swaying like a monolith at the side of the stage, just behind the spot where Guan Shan stands.

Exit doors are slammed open, the crowds shoving their way out, and Guan Shan hears it groan like a wounded beast ready to fall. He watches, with morbid fascination, as scaffolding and wires pull away, and the rafter starts to lean.

 _‘Guan Shan, move!’_ He Tian shouts, already throwing off his guitar, body already lunging.

And Guan Shan thinks numbly, knowing he’ll never move fast enough, _I don’t mind if it doesn’t._

 

* * *

 

Guan Shan thinks, _Ow._

His mouth is thick and cottony, a sour coating on his tongue like a too-short sleep. His gums ache, his face aches, and he quickly regrets the urge to move his limbs. His ankle smarts, and the rest of him feels too heavy and bruised in a way he doesn’t want to press at.

He looks down at his hands without raising his head, and his knuckles are cross-hatched and starting to scab, one finger purpled and swollen, knuckles split, his arms stained with purple and yellowing blotches. Blearily, Guan Shan eyes the needle in his hand, held in place with a strip of tape; the high beep of a monitor becomes a metronome to the aired room he’s lying in, and the smell of antiseptic and bleached sheets is the final giveaway.

Guan Shan closes his eyes. _A fucking hospital._

A voice somewhere, muted through walls or curtains or doors, reaches Guan Shan’s ears. ‘If you think for one fucking second that I will _ever_ forget what you did today, then you are _dreaming_.’

‘Tian—’

‘No. You don’t get to call me that anymore. We don’t know each other. We’re not a family anymore. You forfeited that right.’ Their voice drops. ‘And if you even think about coming near him again, then I will rip off your head and shit down your throat until you _choke._ Do you understand?’

Guan Shan blinks, wiping crust from his eyes. He fumbles around the bed for a remote, and winces as the bed groans to lift him upwards into a half-sitting position, ribs protesting.

‘Is that what you want me to tell Father?’

‘I don’t care what you tell him. What if he’d been Qui Feng?’ There’s silence, and He Tian’s voice challenges it. ‘You put the business over your family. You’re nothing to me.’

‘The family is the business,’ He Cheng replies flatly.

‘Great. I don’t want to be a part of either.’

Guan Shan doesn’t have time to put all the pieces together. Footsteps click against the hallway floor, and the door to Guan Shan’s room slides shut. He fights with the tiredness ebbing in his head in waves, and He Tian’s face swims as he perches carefully on the edge of his bed.

‘Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes.’

Pinching his features together hurts. ‘Is that a polite way of saying I look like shit?’

He Tian’s mouth quirks. ‘It’s a way of saying you look pretty alright for someone who nearly had a twelve-foot rafter fall on them.’

‘I should be dead,’ Guan Shan says, faintly nauseous with the revelation that He Tian’s family wanted that to be a possibility in a crushing, ruining finale. It doesn’t scare him as much as it should. He pauses and asks, _‘Nearly?’_

He Tian cuffs his knuckles under his jawline and looks away. ‘I told you I wanted more than a first round.’

Guan Shan forces focus; his eyes strain as they dart over He Tian’s body. He’s showered and dressed, dressed in black while the light outside the gauzy curtains is faint and fading, sparse clouds cotton-pink. Guan Shan plays over the night, the theatre, the ringing final notes of their third song, recalls it dream-like and vignetted, a halcyon memory that feels unreachable now.

‘You’re not hurt?’

He Tian shrugs away the concern. ‘Some bruising. Nothing major.’

Guan Shan wants the needle out of his hand. ‘I’m racking up a debt,’ he says.

He Tian scoffs, leans into him. ‘I broke your nose on the impact and your ankle’s fucking shattered. I don’t think you owe me on this one.’

Guan Shan glances down at the bulge of plaster at the end of the bed. That explained the pain. The urge to move his foot just for the flare is suddenly addictive. ‘I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus.’

‘You’ll be fine,’ He Tian dismisses. ‘You’ve got songs to write for us.’

Guan Shan blinks. ‘You mean…?’

He Tian’s grin is wide. He slides his phone out, taps onto a contact. ‘They want to speak with you,’ he says.

Guan Shan curls his lip up at the mirror image of his face. His eyes are black and sunken, nose bandaged, lips dry, and his freckles are stark against his pale skin. Red has filled one eye, a vessel burst.

Fuck, he looks ill.

The video call connects before he can rip himself apart too much, and the faces of Jian Yi, Zhengxi, and Qui Feng fill the screen. A mix of shock and relief flits across their faces, and Jian Yi is crowding in front of the webcam. Guan Shan makes out the glassy span of Qui Feng’s office behind them.

‘Damn, we thought you were never gonna wake up,’ Jian Yi complains, and his expression twists quickly to chagrin as Zhengxi cuffs him across the head.

‘He was concussed, idiot,’ Zhengxi mutters. ‘Not comatosed.’

‘Same thing,’ Jian Yi shrugs.

‘How are you feeling, Guan Shan?’ Qui Feng asks, elbows on the edge of her desk. Her brows are furrowed. Guan Shan thinks about his mother, wonders if she knows. What she knows.

‘Been better,’ he admits begrudgingly, uncomfortable and aching. This is a weakness, lying here, gawped at through a screen. He can’t hide the bandages or the bruises, or the railings of his hospital bed. He’s conscious enough of He Tian’s presence at his side, warm and clean and irrefutably _there_.

Why was it always him?

Thank fuck it was always him.

‘Do you want the bad news or the good news?’ Qui Feng asks.

‘Oh, fuck that,’ says He Tian. He turns his face to Guan Shan. ‘ _Swimming in the Blood_ won the competition.’

Guan Shan receives the news in the same way he’d woken up: foggy, a little pained, entirely confused. Disorientation forces his expression into blankness and he says, _‘How?’_

It triggers laughter between them, an allowing bob of Zhengxi’s head, a disbelieving shrug from Jian Yi. Their gestures reflect everything Guan Shan’s thinking— _isn’t_ thinking. Patchily, he remembers Qui Feng running towards them backstage, the anguish on her face blurred by chaos. Had she known how the next few minutes were going to unfold?

‘The judges liked you,’ Qui Feng tells him. ‘They saw something in you. An earnestness, they said. An authenticity that reflected the old times and showed your own style enough to be distinct.’

Jian Yi whistles lowly. ‘Who knew we had it in us?’

Guan Shan shifts in the bed, and winces. ‘What does that mean now?’ he asks. The drowsiness of sleep and painkillers is starting to wear off, and he catches He Tian’s fingers reaching for the nurse’s button.

Qui Feng spreads her hands. ‘It means what it always meant if you won. I’ve met with labels today who have offers for you. You’ll be prioritised for studio space with them. It’s in your hands how you go forward.’

‘What about your label?’ He Tian asks.

Qui Feng tilts her head. ‘What about it?’

‘Are you still signing?’

She stares straight at him, and then to the boys in the office, and then to Guan Shan. ‘You’d want that?’

‘You got us here,’ Zhengxi says earnestly. ‘We like working with you.’

Indecision shifts over her face, just like the day they’d walked into her office and laid their cards on the table. It had been a poor, poor hand. Qui Feng had taken a risk. They owed that to her, maybe.

‘If you’ll have me,’ she says, ‘then I’m sure we could work something out.’

 

* * *

 

The call closes up soon after. He Tian tells them to fuck off and let Guan Shan rest, and they protest dutifully as He Tian taps the ‘End Call’ button.

The silence is thick and viscous.

Guan Shan thinks about Qui Feng’s closing smile, slightly redemptive, the ‘thank you’ she mouthed while Jian Yi warbled about global stages and teams of paparazzi, seconds before He Tian hung up.

He knows He Tian is thinking about something different. He knows He Tian just ripped himself from his family and his money and his contacts barely half an hour ago, and that things are going to change for him now. There’s a slope to his shoulders as he sits on the edge of the bed that says he doesn’t know how to hold himself anymore. He’s never known how to hold himself for himself.

 _Maybe we do want to know what shit you’ve gotten yourself into that you’re gonna pull us into, too,_ Zhengxi had said. The words, prophetic, are goading now. Guan Shan’s burst blood vessel speaks for itself.

He Tian sucks in a breath, and the sound is startling. ‘Why did you stand there?’ he asks, shattering the silence. Guan Shan takes the question like a roundhouse kick to the mouth, the openness challenging. ‘You just—you fucking _stood_ there.’

Guan Shan looks down at his sheets, scratchy on his skin, at the IV needle taped into his veins. ‘I didn’t think there would be time,’ he mutters.

He Tian won’t accept it. ‘It was more than that,’ he insists. ‘You just fucking stood there.’

Guan Shan shifts his gaze towards him, and he has to take a moment to think this through; he has to find some rationality in it that they can both accept, something that doesn’t taste like ashen anger and the sour bitterness of unripe citrus. ‘I was happy, y’know,’ he says honestly. His voice sounds too loud in the room. ‘Playing music shit with you guys and the night with you at your dad’s… I just thought if that was as good as it was gonna fuckin’ get, that was alright with me.’

This must be a punishment for He Tian, Guan Shan realises. If only slightly. He has to look at Guan Shan’s ruined face and know it might have been worse. He had to carry him from the stage and know it might have been his corpse. He has to sit at his side, and accept he shares blood with the men that put him here.

_So either they make me quit the band, or they quit me._

‘You didn’t quit me,’ Guan Shan says. ‘Whatever happened. It’s still you and me.’

He Tian’s face crumples, guilt plain and unhidden. ‘I don’t know I can promise you that forever. Not if it ends up with you in a fucking hospital bed again.’

‘I’m stronger than I look,’ Guan Shan tells him.

He Tian’s throat works, looking in flashes at Guan Shan’s face, like he’s torn between indulgence and hiding from the mirror Guan Shan’s injuries hold up to him.

‘We both know that’s a lie,’ He Tian says, with weary derision.

Fuck him, he’s right, and Guan Shan doesn’t have the energy or the concentration to hold him accountable for it. It takes effort to slant his mouth into a smile.

‘We can keep it up for a while, can’t we? ‘Til tomorrow, yeah?’

He Tian smiles back, shadowed but clearing, doubtful but relenting. There’s time between them yet, maybe longer than tomorrow extends, maybe counted with a hundred rises and falls of the sun over its curved horizon, a collection of blue Mondays and grey Tuesdays and Fridays where he might realise he’s in love. Maybe this is the start of it all; maybe this will forecast their future.

Guan Shan thinks of _kintsugi_ pottery and earthquakes and hot kisses on the side of his neck. He thinks of a stage, of lights like falling stars, of cheering like an avalanche, and He Tian’s face greeting him in a hospital room, briskly saved.

‘Tomorrow,’ He Tian says, nothing like a promise, but it’ll have to do. ‘That’s all the time we need.’

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was a request. You can find more information about me and how to support me on my Tumblr. Please kudos, comment, or [signal boost my Tumblr post if you enjoyed](https://agapaic.tumblr.com/post/175991045546/fic-swimming-in-the-blood)!


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